Your initial reflections on wire mesh may conjure unappealing images of chain link fences and austere garden barriers. That said, wire mesh certainly earns credit for utility. Often used as a protective barrier, it makes for an ideal window screen or screen door to keep mosquitoes and other six-legged undesirables out. The small grid of dividers can even be used to sift garden soil and other limitless residential applications.

Wire mesh is a surprisingly versatile product that can be applied both functionally and creatively throughout the home. Found in woven, welded, or knit varieties, wire mesh can be strong enough to build with and is inexpensive, too.

These days, wire mesh is growing in popularity for its decorative potential, even emerging as the trendy new material in design. Remodelista recently featured a series of posts on new furniture products made from wire mesh. These include the De La Tour wire mesh chair from Urban Outfitters, the Heaven chair from Emu, and vintage-looking iron wire shelving and baskets. The look is adaptable – the same basket could conceivably be foreseen on an outdoor deck, storing firewood, or in a contemporary bathroom, filled with magazines. Similarly, one could imagine the wire mesh chair on a patio or in an artsy loft.

As further fuel for all the wire mesh hype, an Oregon based company, Cascade Coil Drapery, Inc., was founded in 1987 but has recently garnered attention from both HGTV and SF Gate. Cascade Coil makes everything from window treatments, dividers, exterior cladding, and shower curtains to security products and visual merchandizing products. Imagine blue architectural wire drapery hanging from a gallery ceiling. Designers are paying attention to the line’s range of colors, textures, modernity, and strength. SF Gate calls the wire mesh products a stylish and inexpensive way to divvy up space in the home, while HGTV calls them low maintenance fabric alternatives.

It is easy to purchase wire mesh at your corner hardware store, then look up ways to make things such as a wire mesh lampshade. Beyond the remodeling sphere, wire mesh is used frequently by artists like Wayne Kern, who was recently featured in the Sacramento Bee. Kern turns metal scrap into artistic mesh figures and painted mesh fishes.

As you look around for wire mesh, you mind find products with similar sensibilities, such as ultra modern, metal mesh interior curtains by Whiting and Davis.

Links:

A stylish, inexpensive way to divvy up space in the home
Toolbox: Wire Mesh
Metal mesh curtains

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