Celebrating 20 Years and Reflecting Upon the Design that Started It All: The Headboard

 

 

Golden Gate Design & Furniture Company is celebrating its 20th Anniversary this spring.  What started as a personal desire for a headboard created from a piece of Golden Gate Bridge hand railing, has developed into a business and craft that has kept designer Rick Bulan busy over the last 20 years.

 

In early 1994, Bulan happened to catch a local television news segment featuring the 1993 replacement of some original pedestrian handrail on the Golden Gate Bridge.  “Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse on TV of this section of handrail being removed from the bridge,” Bulan reflected, thinking back upon the moment that the concept came to him.  “As a San Francisco native, I thought it would be cool to have a headboard made out of this handrail.” 

 

  

After tracking down the contractor who did the replacement, he bought himself a section of railing and created four headboards out of the material.  “I went to buy a section of railing, not realizing that each section was 12 feet long and weighed, literally, half a ton.  I arranged to have a truck pick up and deliver my piece of handrail, then spent several weeks with abrasive blades trying to cut the steel down to a manageable size so that it could function as a headboard.”  After seeing the interest in the headboard by other friends and family, Bulan went back to the contractor and negotiated to purchase the remaining sections of hand rail so as to start a business crafting furniture out of the historic steel.

 

After negotiating to purchase the available sections of handrail from the contractor, Bulan ran his first advertisement in the July / August 1994 issue of Metropolitan Home, launching the headboard design crafted from that first section of handrail purchased earlier in the year.
 

 

 

Reflecting on the circumstances of the initial advertisement that launched his business, Bulan “started by purchasing an ad in Metropolitan Home magazine.  It was a special advertising section that provided an image of the product with a couple paragraphs of backstory.  I had sent them my ad copy and an image of the headboard on a white background just before my wife and I left for a month long trip to visit her family in Kentucky.  However, while we were on the road, I received a message from the magazine that they wanted a photo of me to go with the story in the ad."

 

"They wanted it to look like I was leaning up against the headboard.  So, my wife and I are out in the middle of rural Kentucky, trying to take a snapshot of me on a white background, looking like I was leaning against an imaginary handrail of the Golden Gate Bridge.  As luck would have it, the local town’s beauty parlor was hosting a traveling portrait studio that week, and I was finally able to get a portrait done.  I think we used a broom as the prop for me to lean my elbow on, which the magazine then cut out and replaced with the image of the headboard that I had sent them.  Of course, by doing this, the proportions were off and it made for a bit of an awkward photograph,” Bulan laughingly recalls.

 

All of this was unknown territory to Bulan, but the gamble paid off.  Inquiries and orders started trickling in.  “My wife and I were creating our first product brochures by hand, making mini-scrapbook style booklets with pages we printed out on our printer at home and actual photographs affixed to them.  This was back in the day when you had to drop your film negative off at the local 1hour photo shop to have reprints done, and we were just using snapshots we took with our personal camera.  Eventually came the professional photographs done in a studio and professionally printed literature, but it’s amazing to look back over the years and see how the technology has changed, to become what it is now in the digital age.”

 

However, as he looks back over the last two decades, Bulan points out that the technology and techniques of creating the furniture has basically remained the same.  It is the tools and techniques used to run the actual business that have changed over the years.  "As we've moved into the digital age, it's the use of computers, cell phones, email, etc. that has changed the most, making communication and running a business so much easier to do.  But the way I built the furniture then is pretty much the same way I do it today."

 

Spring 2014 marks twenty years since that fateful day when Bulan saw the local news story.  He is still creating headboards, as well as various table and lamp designs, from the historic handrail that was removed from the Golden Gate Bridge in 1993.  All of the limited edition designs are hand-crafted locally in small batches by Bulan and the specialized artisans he works closely with at his studio workshop in San Francisco.  You can see all of Bulan’s current designs at his company’s website, GGBFurniture.com, and here at TheChrysopylae.com.  His Pacifica showroom and San Francisco workshop are available by appointment only.

 

Golden Gate Design& Furniture Company - 415.661.6263

Showroom: 446 Old County Road, Pacifica, CA 94044
Workshop: 1 Rankin Street, Studio #417, San Francisco CA 94124

info@ggbfurniture.com  -  www.ggbfurniture.com  -  www.facebook.com/ggbfurniture