Tanglewood Conservatories Blog

What do Hot Rods and conservatories have in common?

One of our shop guys brought this magazine article to my attention recently. He is an avid owner and builder of Hot Rods, souped up classic stock cars, and he reads the magazines on breaks and lunch.

I’ve been aware of the resurgence of interest in both great classic conservatories and great classic cars but I’ve never connected them before.

Both of these have a home in my heart. As a youngster, I like many boys my age, loved cars. The freedom of having your own car – at a time when not every kid had a car, was intoxicating. Most of us could not afford anything very nice or very new so we had to learn how to take an old clunker and fix it up into a really sweet rod. We’d swap out the engines and trans to get something with more power, add a hood scoop and a custom paint job, cool wheels and we’d be set to show it off.

It was a terrific creative outlet. Before I knew anything about “creating art”, the cars and bikes that I built myself, were my pieces of art. Their creation required the same sensitivity that any designer exercises. I also learned to use my own hands to make things and to discipline myself so that I could accomplish some really big projects which took a lot of time.

Later in life, when my interest turned to conservatories and building a company, many of the skills and lessons I learned applied.

The great classic conservatories were also an inspiration to me as we set about figuring out how to create Tanglewood’s buildings. I loved the sense of novelty and the creativity that their builders evidently had. After all, back in the nineteenth century, conservatories were a new building type and it was up to the architects and builders of the time to figure out how to create such fantastic structures.

They had use of the new technology of the Industrial Revolution which made iron, steel and large pieces of glass available and their ability to devise structural systems and express them as architectural designs was limited only by their imagination.

I realized however, as I set about essentially the same task 100 years later, that times had changed. No longer, for example, were custom made parts such as cast iron widely available at low cost. Modern building systems, themselves highly standardized (think 2 x 4’s and 4 x 8 sheets), render it impossible to create the kind of conservatory I wanted. I tried in the beginning but could not come close to the look of the beloved “old ones”.

Often, people come to us looking for just a glass roof system to go onto standard construction walls. I always feel that an opportunity to create a really great room has been missed. Usually it is the result of budget constraints.

Now however, I find ourselves in the midst of another Industrial Revolution. It seems to me that for years, the systems that developed to achieve the efficiencies of mass production and led to standardization, have forced everyone to build basically the same stuff. There are lot’s of different ways to arrange all those standardized pieces (windows, bricks, pieces of steel, plywood), into varying shaped buildings but if you’re limited to using these standardized pieces, it’s very difficult to invent something really new.

With the arrival in the last ten years of relatively inexpensive CNC (computer-operated) machinery, the equation has been changed and short runs of highly custom items are feasible again – maybe for the first time in 100 years. It might have been Henry Ford who put an end to it last time and we’ve been thinking that more and more standardization is best ever since!

I think the reason people love conservatories is just because they are so unique, so different from every other room in their house. By placing the classic car in front of the conservatory, the author makes a great point. It’s not just that interest has been rekindled in many things that embody classic design but the creative inventiveness and ingenuity of the guy customizing the car is akin to the creative inventiveness and ingenuity embodied in these great old conservatory buildings.

I’d take it a step further and say that the creative inventive spirit behind the car and the conservatory is also behind our company as well.

The author says of the cars’ creator, a man named Alex Test: “…his passion has always been custom work. As far back as he can recall, he has had the urge to modify. His “mad scientist” mentality hasn’t stopped yet.”

I read that and thought of our work here at Tanglewood Conservatories.

By the way, the conservatory is in Detroit.

Alan