Furniture
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Four years ago, when my partner and I bought our first condo, we decided not to spoil our new space with the old, worn-out Ikea futon we had in our rental apartment. We were both happy to leave the couch on the curbside when we moved, but it was a full four years before we…
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Geof Ramsay is a modern Maritimes designer. He was raised in Moncton and lives in Halifax, but learned his craft in Detroit, Ottawa and Amsterdam before setting up his eponymous studio in 2009. His witty Steps seat reflects both his East Coast roots and international influences. The piece is a play on people’s tendency to…
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As a reaction to mass manufacturing, the burgeoning slow furniture movement is a painstakingly careful, anachronistically plodding way to produce chairs, desks and credenzas. Everything is made using time-honoured carpentry techniques, out of elemental materials, without computer-guided machines and routers. Acclaimed, Toronto-based Heidi Earnshaw is an advocate of the trend. Her designs have the subtlety…
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Marble is to geology what Cher is to the entertainment industry: hard and soft at the same time with an endless capacity for reinvention and an unquestionable ability to dazzle. The only difference is that marble has been beloved for a few (thousand) years longer — even if both the stone and the singer look…
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Basket weaving is one of the oldest known handcrafts. It predates pottery and, for at least 10,000 years, has been a vital means of transforming leaves and grass into vessels for storage and transportation. These days, even at a time when furniture production has never been more high-tech — it’s possible for a designer to model…
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As a testament to his longevity, rock-star status and sheer ingenuity, designer Marcel Wanders has been called both the Madonna and the Lady Gaga of the furniture world. The comparisons seem fair when considering his furniture. The Amsterdamer eschews the minimal aesthetic of peers like Philippe Starck in favour of adding a subversive – sometimes…
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Patty Johnson is a master furniture designer with a deep sense of social responsibility. At her Toronto studio, she crafts the kind of playful-but-sophisticated pieces — neon, rattan-style arm chairs woven from sustainable fibres — that make design editors and critics go goo-goo eyed. She also spends considerable time in places like Haiti and Botswana,…
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When designer Marie-josé Gustave moved to Quebec from France 15 years ago, she, not surprisingly, hauled her stuff with a bevy of cardboard boxes. But, unlike most of us, Gustave didn’t give away, store or toss the containers when she got here. She started turning them into art and decor. “I had lots of boxes,”…
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Even if you’ve never heard of Giulio Cappellini, or the eponymous design studio he’s run for three decades, chances are you’ve seen some of the furniture maker’s quizzically shaped, brightly hued tables, couches and cabinetry. If not in top style mags like Elle Decor, Dwell and Architectural Digest, then on display at prestigious museums like…
Matthew Hague 