Of trophy hunters, globe-trotters

There are those who think nothing of dispatching their architects and builders to the ends of the earth to personally scope out far more exotic goods,  to the Middle East for the perfect limestone, even as bombs are going off, or to Indonesia for centuries-old reclaimed teak.

For the ultra-high-end contractor, it's just part of a day’s work. Consider the case of John Finton, a Los Angeles contractor who is known as “a modern day Indiana Jones.”

Finton travels the world to find rare and beautiful building materials for his clients. He has gone to China for cobblestones from a road that was being demolished, to pave a client’s driveway; to the jungles of Nicaragua by jeep, if you please because another client wanted an authentic and rustic clay tile with colours that would have variations, but not too many variations; to Jerusalem, to make sure the so-called biblical stone his client had ordered was coming from a school that really was hundreds of years old.

There are other challenges as well. For a client in Russia building a rather large country estate (55,000 square feet, with 880 windows), Finton arranged to have thick slate for the roof brought in from Vermont. Political unrest also creates problems. Going to Jordan for limestone, as he has done a few times, he has been frisked and had to stay in a hotel that had just been bombed.

You might think an architect or designer would be able to obtain such things without leaving the office. But contractors, architects and designers who travel abroad to find these treasures would disagree. The only way you can make certain the product is as advertised is by going to the source, they say.

Ronnette Riley, a New York City architect, agrees. A designer often needs to go to the source to ensure that the colour is consistent, that there is sufficient quantity and that the material is structurally sound, she said. And a trip on which the clients accompany the architect, like the owners of a 12-room flat in London did, travelling to an Italian quarry with Riley to pick out stone, can be helpful for other reasons as well.

Take the case of Fernando Sanchez, a Miami designer. His finds include a collection of 19th-century opium pipes that are being set into an acrylic wall for a client in South America, and stingray skins, his equivalent of the hunter’s snarling lion head on the wall, which he plans to use on paneling in a bathroom. Last month, Sanchez travelled for two weeks to Bangkok and Chiang Mai, Thailand.

Art Deco look

He is redoing a home in Miami, to make it look like a 1920s Art Deco house. He was also shopping for a wooden door frame on a concrete splint, to go in a meditation garden, and scouring the ruins of overgrown buildings for antique tiles, for both the Miami project and an elaborate garden in South America that already has an 18th-century Chinese horse-watering tub.

“These tiles are full of moss, I don’t wash them,” Sanchez said. “The spores of the moss are in the terra cotta, so once you get them to the right place, the moss grows out again. In three months, you have the green wall. It looks very aged and antique.”

But you are carting away precious artifacts? And how much is that Indonesian roof ornament? Bob Fireman is the president of From the Source, a company that sells salvaged and plantation woods, as well as products made from Indonesian wood, like a coffee table, made with inga wood perhaps obtained from a rice farmer clearing his field. Isn’t he concerned that, in buying up old doors and walls from 100-year-old homes, he’s taking a country’s irreplaceable heritage? 

“Why should I dictate where and how people live, just because to me it seems charming or quaint? I'm not the one living there. I know what's beautiful to me and I want to make good use of it.”

From Manhattan to India

Mary Gibbons, a designer at Curley Contracting in Greenwich, Conn., who also makes hand-glazed tiles, was once sent by a client in Manhattan to India for three days to obtain a glaze. “She wanted a specific, real coppery effect in her backsplash,” Gibbons said. “I tried different glazes, and she did some research and found out about a factory in India. I flew to Mumbai and from there I took a domestic flight to Hyderabad.”