CHICAGO—After more than eleven years of running a business that helps corporate clients transform or decommission their offices, Mason Awtry, president and owner of Rightsize Facility Performance, has assembled a huge collection of vintage, Mid-Century Modern and collectible furniture. And to help office users put the final touch on their spaces, he has just launched Relic Furniture Gallery, a showroom and online store.
“We don't expect folks to come in and purchase their entire office,” Awtry tells GlobeSt.com. But the furnishings in the Relic showroom, located at 5000 W. Roosevelt in Chicago, are typically coveted by collectors and could become the centerpieces of reception areas. High-end pieces by Mies van der Rohe and from Herman Miller's Eames line as well as designs by Knoll, Kittinger and Baker are just a few examples of the items for sale.
“I've been a collector of fine furniture my entire life,” Awtry adds. But ever since starting Rightsize he grew his collection to about 750 pieces by always setting aside the top finds whenever decommissioning an office.
Founded in 2004 as an office furniture liquidator, Rightsize Facility Performance today also operates the Office Furniture Center, a 225,000 square-foot Chicago showroom that offers clients a single source for furniture, as well as continuing to take on decommissions, furniture buybacks, deliveries, interior design and ancillary project services.
“We're getting a great response from the architectural and design communities,” Awtry says of Relic. Still, the vintage furniture collection is so vast he expects it “will last the better part of 2015.”
But even after Awtry sells off this collection, the Relic Furniture Gallery will stay in business. “We are very much in the hunt for new pieces on a daily basis.”
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Brian J. Rogal
Brian J. Rogal is a Chicago-based freelance writer with years of experience as an investigative reporter and editor, most notably at The Chicago Reporter, where he concentrated on housing issues. He also has written extensively on alternative energy and the payments card industry for national trade publications.
