Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, April 22, 1993 TAG: 9304220377
SECTION: NEIGHBORS PAGE: S-16 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
He has designed $50,000 kitchens and bathrooms in California mansions. He has made handcarved reproductions of Victorian window frames, a 12th-century French monastery door and a Victorian door with stained glass.
"Whenever I make a reproduction, I never make it exactly like the original. I always make it a little different," Pouille said.
"I make one piece, and I make it special. "
To mass-produce copies of one thing ruins its uniqueness for the person who owns it, he said. Plus, "I don't think it's as interesting."
Dick and Margaret Grayson of Roanoke own one of his creations, a cherry dining room table made to look antique. The table, which cost about $3,000, can be seen Saturday while their house at 2609 Robin Hood Road is open for Roanoke's Historic Garden Week Tour.
To make a table look antique, Pouille first designs and builds it. Then, instead of smoothing and sanding the wood, he runs a wire brush over it to give the grain a rough look. To imitate worm holes, he punches or drills at an angle. Sometimes he uses a torch to scorch the wood in places. He beats the wood with a chain to make dents. He applies wood stain.
And, to make really dark, old-looking stains, he pours a very strong coffee, such as Espresso, over the table and rubs it in, grounds and all.
"When you stain wood, you try to make it not perfect. You have to be careful not to overdo," Pouille said. He also tries to turn natural imperfections in the wood into interesting effects.
Pouille said it is "less complicated to do an antique look than a beautiful, fine finish."
Pouille is particular about the kind of wood he uses to make furniture and "`will go out of my way to use wood that doesn't come from [the rain forests]."
Pouille, who studied interior design in Paris at Ecole Boule, also signs every furniture piece he makes. "I like to put the first name of the woman of the house on it, too, if it's for her," he said.
Pouille's business did well when he lived in Los Angeles, but for the past 1 1/2 years that he's been in Roanoke, he's had a hard time getting re-established. He is still trying to set up a woodworking shop to handle the hand-carved work, building and installation that he used to do himself.
For now, on projects bigger than individual furniture pieces, he "usually goes in with subcontractors who do the building" after he does the designing.
"You don't have the same kind of clientele here. You don't have people here with millions of dollars. Someone here is not going to put a $50,000 kitchen in a $100,000 home," said Pouille, who came to Roanoke with his fiancee and administrative assistant, Julia Jackson.
Originally from Paris, Pouille, 35, said he "wanted to visit the United States and wound up staying," back in 1985.
He didn't set up his interior design business in America right away, because "I didn't speak one word of English." He worked in a factory and attended the University of California, and then "when my English was good enough, I started my business again."
by CNB