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Market Collection: Divine Inspiration

-- Interior Design, 3/1/2008 12:00:00 AM

When the name of your company has a religious ring, you may raise expectations pretty high. For-tunately, furniture by Lebanon's Baal Creations lives up to them—with the help of a metalwork process that founder Gilbert Debs and head of design Claudia Chahine have dubbed cold fusion. Instead of being heated to a molten state, the metal remains cool enough to be hand-molded onto wood, which would normally burn.

The Brut cocktail table features blocky hand-carved walnut legs and a top that would be pure George Nakashima if it didn't happen to be brass. Another cocktail table, the Vie, looks like a giant white marble egg sliced in half, its cast-bronze top detailed with a shallow divot. The Twin table, actually two separate benchlike pieces placed side by side, is wengé surfaced in brass.

Seating emphasizes curves. Cote d'Or's beanbag form is cast in copper. If you're looking for more give, a foam cushion and luxe velvet-upholstered pillows are cradled inside the cast-bronze One sofa, which also works outdoors, and a leather seat is slung across the Trone chair's curved copper base.

Fancy one type of metal more than another? Debs and Chahine have developed a method for quick transformation. Nusa Furniture, 323-937-7055; nusafurniture.com. circle 407