(FORTUNE Small Business) – Giancarlo de Astis has found a solution to his midlife crisis: pursuing his childhood passion, airplanes, by making furniture out of used parts. His latest design is the much-anticipated La Fortuna, a desk made from the wing of a Grumman Mohawk plane, which looks as if it is still floating in the air and which sells for $10,000. De Astis, 42, a former entertainment industry executive who now lives in Los Angeles, made his artistic debut in 2000 and quickly earned both commercial and critical success with the Il Primo desk, fashioned from an aileron of a Fairchild C-119 plane that he found in a junkyard in the Sonora desert near Tucson. Next on his to-do list: crafting furniture from naval equipment. —DAISY CHAN