Croft House

“I’m a Bay Area kid at heart,” says Riley Rea, co-founder of Croft House, a furniture line known for its simple, modern forms and natural materials, a look inspired by Rea’s Northern California upbringing.

Rea, who grew up in Santa Rosa, has family going back at least six generations in San Francisco. He spent much of his formative years exploring Northern California with his dad, who was a contractor. Their visits to job sites took them up and down the California coast, where the state’s natural beauty left a strong impression on him.

A decade ago, Rea was living in Los Angeles — where he “moved for the weather” — as an executive assistant in the film industry. As a child, he had always tinkered with his father’s work tools, but his knack for building things took a turn for the fortuitous when he started refinishing furniture that, he says, he was “literally finding in the trash.” He began to sell the pieces, first on Craigslist, and later to people he knew. “I was good at it,” he says.

Before long, Rea couldn’t keep up with the demand. So he started making the furniture himself, rather than sourcing it secondhand. “I loved the act of refurbishing and bringing materials to life,” says Rea, who initially worked out of his garage on Croft Avenue in West Hollywood. About one year into the venture, he met Alex Segal, an East Coast transplant who had moved to Los Angeles and was working in a restaurant. The two bonded over their love of, well, making things.

Croft House places an emphasis on natural and reclaimed materials. In fact, 90 percent of their material is salvaged and reclaimed wood. The Railcar dining table, one of the company’s first designs, epitomizes this spirit. “I knew I wanted to make a big dining table so I set out to find material that was inspiring,” explains Rea, who came across some reclaimed wood from an 1800s Sierra Nevada railcar repair station. Rea reworked the piece into a modern design Croft House at Batch SF, 11 a.m.-7 p.m. MondayFriday, and 10:30 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday-Sunday. Through Oct. 27. 1648 Pacific Ave., San Francisco. 415-757-0376 or www.crofthouse.com

Photos by R. Brad Knipstein Riley Rea brings his Croft House line of furniture to S.F. for a pop-up at Batch SF.