Thanks to Pearl and Hotel Emma I get to work with the best architects and designers around, executing their ideas. I think reusing this old equipment preserves the embodied human energy, the energy it took to make it and work with it.вЂќ When I take something apart, I see where other people have worked on it, fixed it, made measurements and notesвЂ¦ people who arenвЂ™t around anymore. He speaks respectfully and poignantly about his connection to the people who built and used the old equipment heвЂ™s brought back to life. Robert is an alumnus of Trinity University, a master blacksmith, an excellent cook and something of a philosopher, too. They couldnвЂ™t imagine that a piece of equipment as big as a car could be made of solid bronze. And he discovered a secret beneath decades of paint, dirt and grease: solid bronze. Robert made them with parts from circa-1940 bottle-filling equipment, which he salvaged from PearlвЂ™s warehouse. The charming silk-swagged elephant identifying Hotel EmmaвЂ™s Elephant Cellar.ДЄbout those Elephant Cellar chandeliers. The elegant вЂњpandelierвЂќ light fixture (made entirely of skillets) at the original entrance to PearlвЂ™s Culinary Institute of America. The individually-crafted numbers on guestroom doors.

SternewirthвЂ™s huge circular light fixture, made from bottling machinery. The evidence of that joy is everywhere in the hotel and around Pearl. Robert Diaz de Leon is a metal craftsman who admits to being a workaholic because of the joy he finds in his work. вЂњIвЂ™ve always been a maker - the process of solving problems and putting things together makes me happy.вЂќ ballroom chandeliers from repurposed bottling equipment. This is a man in love with making things, whether itвЂ™s baking from-scratch pizza in the wood-burning oven he built in his backyard, fashioning brass label frames for the hotelвЂ™s library, or creating 3,000-lb. вЂњBlacksmithing in July in South Texas: you just drink lots of water and suffer.

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