Innovating w ith ski lif t m aterial Past the fire pits are another popular commodity — original ski chairs that have been retired from their lifts. Bookman has about 150 chairs from the Breckenridge Super Chair lift. People place them both inside and outside, as swings or benches, he said. “It’s the authenticity of what’s here in the ski area,” he said of the chairs’ popularity. “(People) want to bring that into their house.” When he bought the chairs, Bookman also bought about
three miles of haul rope — the twisted steel cable that carried the chairs up and down the hill. He wanted to see what could be done with it, and the results were surprising. He and his workmen unbraided the thick cable, then re-braided a few strands back together to create things like handrails for balconies and staircases, or even handles for cabinets and doors. One surprising effect they found was that, unless artificially straightened, the re-braided cables curve, due to the years of traveling in a circular pattern for the lift. This
PHOTOS COURTESY OF BRECK IRON WORKS
creates a unique, natural wave to the cabinet handles, which have become popular. “Everybody loves the story behind it, … how they creatively have made pieces of art into functional stuff,” said Devon Tilly, president of Mountain View Window & Door in Denver. The company has begun selling Breck Iron Works’ custom hardware designs as its Peak 7 collection. “Everybody loves, in Colorado, to bring the outdoors inside, so that whole concept of a ski chair in your house with cabling, or a handrail that is like the cable, that’s the type of people that really fit that mold with that product.”
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