New York Times Article

Big Color, Big Chrome, But No Fins Or Frost. Orion Creamer’s taste in dorm-room decor ranged well beyond the standard beer-can pyramids and Bob Marley posters.

“When I was in college, I used to collect old refrigerator doors and hang them on the wall,” said Mr. Creamer, co-founder of the Big Chill, a refrigerator maker based in Boulder, Colo. “You know, just as art.”
Mr. Creamer’s odd artwork gave him an appreciation for the gaudy refrigerators of the Eisenhower era, when appliances took their design cues from Detroit rather than Scandinavia. So when his uncle, Thom Vernon, came calling in 2001, looking for a partner to help create Big Chill’s line of retro refrigerators, Mr. Creamer was happy to wade through junkyards in the name of research.
The idea had first occurred to Mr. Vernon when he was renovating a house in Santa Barbara, Calif. The kitchen was decked out with vintage countertops and cabinets, and he wanted a similarly styled refrigerator to match- albeit one that didn’t require frequent defrosting, like the models of yore. Try as he might, Mr. Vernon couldn’t locate a refrigerator that looked old but worked like new.
He recruited Mr. Creamer and together they investigated the possibility of making their own retro refrigerators. After examining the designs of more than 50 midcentury models, many salvaged from scrap heaps, they settled on the features they liked: chrome trim, rounded edges and vibrant colors inspired by the hues of cupcake icing. They also settled on a design philosophy: unlike sleek refrigerators made by Sub-Zero, which are designed to exist in harmony with a kitchen’s cabinetry, Big Chill’s iceboxes, which cost $2,700, would be built to stand out.
“We’ve taken the approach of, ‘We want these to scream color,’ ” said Mr. Vernon, who compares his refrigerators’ looks to those of a 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air, sans fins. A fridge, he believes, should be “something you don’t want to hide.”
A refrigerator should also be something you don’t have to hack away at with a chisel to clear out layers of frost that accumulate in the freezer- a major shortcoming of the 1950’s units. The Big Chills suffer from no such drawbacks, thanks to the company’s sleight-of-hand approach to design. The flashy exterior door and its side panels are nothing more than a shell, grafted onto an unadorned modern refrigerator that Big Chill buys from a supplier.
“We didn’t want to be in the manufacturing business,” said Mr. Vernon. “So we came up with an idea of making a facade.” The company initially toyed with letting customers fit the stamped-metal veneers onto the refrigerators themselves, but quickly concluded that few members of its target market were interested in that sort of labor.
Those core customers, Mr. Creamer said, are the sort of people who like their interiors decorated with a dash of irony. “What we’re going for are urban hipsters, I guess you could call them,” he said. “People who want orange in their kitchens”- not just standard refrigerator exteriors like white, black or stainless steel. The most daring consumers can opt for even more offbeat colors, like pink lemonade and buttercup yellow.
Big Chill has sold more than 1000 refrigerators since the company opened for business in July; most customers live in California- a state, noted Mr. Creamer, where people “aren’t afraid to put a red refrigerator” in their kitchen.
Though the Big Chills are available at a handful of home furnishings stores- Krup’s Kitchen and Bath in Manhattan will start selling them early next month- the company’s primary aim is to become a wholesale supplier to upscale kitchen designers.
Still, Mr. Creamer isn’t entirely comfortable with the fact that his undergraduate artistic pursuit has led to a career in kitchen appliances- hardly the industry of Donatello or Jasper Johns. “We try to think of ourselves not as refrigerator guys, but almost as selling art,” he said. Unlike his door-covered wall in college, though, these artworks can keep a six-pack cold, too. Some critics might consider that progress.
-BRENDAN I. KOERNER

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