Erika Winters: Chair Redesigner in Mexico City

Silver chair before redesign

About Erika Winters

Erika Winters has worked for several years redesigning used furniture.
There are endless possibilities when reconditioning furniture, no matter its state of repair. Furniture and people are similar, daily wear and tear takes its toll. Values taught to us as children become outdated, and although they lose relevance as time goes by, they quietly keep their memory, marked by use and the passage of time. Her furniture shows the longing for what we have passed by, left, thought, lost or let go, that old warmth of certain values that have been lost. When rescuing a piece of furniture, Erika makes it as vivid and modern as its surroundings, picking up on something that she had or felt near – so that anyone who can identify with it and its history can enjoy it again, converting it into something unique and important for their house, something that no-one will find ever, anywhere else.

Erika Winters Silver Chair After Redesign

Bio

Erika Winters grew up in the Condesa neighborhood of Mexico City, opposite a beautiful palm tree lined avenue, in a house built in 1935, where her great-aunt who is 101 years old still lives. She spent her teenage years on Calle Amsterdam, a few blocks from Parque Mexico which was like an extension of her house, like the Bosque de Chapultepec and the Museum of Modern Art  which had no railings in those days. Erika remembers walking through the woods with her mother, going to open air concerts in Ciudad Universitaria and The Amazing Lagunilla Market, That’s also like a museum for me. It was a different Mexico City back then.

These are the roots of some her influences which have left a spiritual mark on her and which definitely inspire her way of working.

In the 1990s Erika Winters founded Alquitrabe, a brand of lamps using everyday old and antique objects, placing them in the best department stores and interior decoration shops in Mexico. Alquitrabe products were exported to Argentina, Spain and Switzerland; they were exhibited and sold in Costa Mesa California and inSOHO  (New York), in La Galeria Mark Shapiro. She occasionally still works with lamps but not for such large customers, but on a more exclusive and smaller scale.

Portfolio
Founder of Alquitrabe, 1992-2004, Mexico City;

• Design, coordination and supervision of 385m2 of office space for Marriott Ownership Resorts Int, Zona Rosa, Mexico City;
• Shop window design for Telafashion  electrodomestic stores, Mexico City;
• Initial projects and remodelling of De Maurice beauty parlor, Marriott Vacation Club Int offices in Mexico City, and for the Gestalt Institute, Lomas Verdes, Mexico City
• Design, PR and sales for Alquitrabe lamps. I promoted these lamps in various parts of the world, Mexico, USA, Spain, Switzerland and Argentina

Erika Winters Golden Chair After Redesign

Founder of Erika Winters Design, 2005, Mexico City

• Recovery and restoration of different types of furniture
• Remodelling, design and adaptation of an apartment for the “Circle of Existential Studiesa Institute, Colonia Del Valle, Mexico City
• Restoration of Izote Restaurante in Polanco, Mexico City
• Interior Decoration and remodelling of Hacienda Mamey Domingo, Morelos, Mexico
• Remodeling of a house in Reforma Lomas, Mexico City
• Shop window design for Ma Maison, CAD Ciudad de (Centro de Arquitectura y Diseo).
• Remodeling of a house in Balmori Building, Roma, Mexico City.

Via
Coroflot Portfolios pointed me to Erika Winters Design.