New York, USA - Strong women of salvage are not new. Salvo founder and director, Thornton Kay, says that women were early customers for architectural antiques, seeing the positive in saving demolished items for reuse rather than sending them to landfill. In the seventies he co-founded Walcot Reclamation with Rick Knapp, the first salvage business selling everything from reclaimed stone and roof tiles, to Georgian fireplaces and Coade stone pieces, persuading builders and demolition contractors to sell items rather than smashing them in skips. The market for reclamation gradually grew and a full page article about Walcot in The Daily Telegraph in the late 1970s attracted three sacks of mail. "Architectural salvage was a new concept and people, mainly women," Kay recalls, "who wanted to know what we were doing. They liked the story, appreciated the beauty, durability and craftsmanship of antique pieces and preferred it to the new soulless alternatives. Women did not like the crazy waste of throwing it away in the first place. And that female taste was quickly spotted by breweries trying to attract women into pubs resulting in the salvage-laden Irish themed pubs, and the enduring reuse of reclaimed flooring and effects in up-market fashion shops."

Salvo Fair, the world's first architectural salvage fair, held for many years, mainly at Knebworth and later at Fawley until 2017, had a salvage ladies theme in 2016 called 'Hats off to Women'. Many women working in reclamation came with fascinating stories of how they had 'got into salvage' which were printed in SalvoNEWS online. (Search for 'hats off ' in the search box above to find these)

This month a report in the Smithsonian newsletter by Teresa L. Carey outlines the state of women working in salvage in the U.S.A. 'From lobbying for changes to city laws to running reuse centers for building supplies, women are dominating the deconstruction industry,' she writes. Ruthie Mundell, marketing and outreach director at Community Forklift, sums it up for me. 'Mundell is one of many women around the country leading the reuse and recycling charge. Instead of focusing on trendy plastic straw bans, they are recycling whole houses.'

The Salvo Team itself is also lucky to have two strong women: Sara Morel and Becky Moles championing reuse on a daily basis.

Mundell is in the vanguard of a trend for women working in not-for-profit deconstruction and reuse in America happening because the trade is not seen as lucrative. (See Carey's full Smithsonian article at the link below.) Things need to change and it is up the the women and men of the salvage trade and governments worldwide to make that change. Sara Badiali, a building material reuse consultant, also quoted in the article, thinks regulations are needed but she has searched worldwide and cannot find the words 'building deconstruction' in any current legislation.

Two more pioneering women, Sally Kamprath and Kathy Burdick, run ReHouse Architectural Salvage in New York and use SalvoWEB's free 'for sale' ads to sell stock on its worldwide online marketplace. (The images above are items they currently have for sale on SalvoWEB USA)

ReHouse has announced its 2019 Create-A-Bench auction to raise funds for the 'Mission: Share Outreach Center' where individuals or groups transform simple wood benches into works of art which will be auctioned online to support the Mission: Share Outreach Center and its programs. So are you feeling creative? Would you like to help a good cause? You can create one or more of the benches for the auction. Registration is open until August 1st 2019 for $25. ReHouse will then provide a 'blank' bench.