Feature: Furniture Fair

William Kissel

05/01/2007

When Hugo França Stares at a giant Pequis Vinagreiros tree stump, the Brazilian engineer, designer and sculptor visualizes a chair or a chaise, not the remains of a centuries-old tree felled long ago. The oleaginous tree roots are of little use to industrial furniture makers, whose machinery can’t handle the excess oils. Even custom furniture designers typically prefer to work with less greasy native Brazilian hardwoods such as imbuia, sucupira and acai. However, França finds the gnarly, often hollowed-out Pequis trunks strangely compelling and well suited for what he calls his "furniture sculpture."

Fahrer’s Commo Traseira chair. Photography by Cláudia Pucci. (Click images to enlarge)

The Atlantic rainforest in the Brazilian state of Bahia is littered with the massive stumps, whose roots plunge into the earth as deeply as 140 to 150 feet, making widespread removal nearly impossible. Nevertheless França found his own ingenious way of dealing with the enormity of the task; he simply roughs out his designs with a clay pencil directly onto the stump and uses a chainsaw to coax out the furniture held within. França says it is sometimes possible to cut away very large chunks and transport them an hour away to his atelier, where the wood is manually sculpted into organically shaped tables, benches and sideboards. But the 54-year-old artisan, who speaks very little English, insists he does his best work on site.

França is among a pioneering new breed of Brazilian furniture makers, including Julia Krantz, Paulo Alves, Sergio Fahrer and Maurício Azeredo, whose one-of-a-kind designs don’t start on a sketch pad but instead appear to have morphed from the wood itself; the knots, curves and discolorations dictating the size, form and decorative nuances of the finished piece. Many have compared their work to that of other important 20th-century Brazilian furniture makers such as Sergio Rodrigues, Joaquim Tenreiro and José Zanine.

Fahrer employs sustainable woods for his Niq coffee table and Paso Doble chaise, which was an iF Design Products Award finalist in 2006. Top photograph by Pierré Yves Refalo. Bottom photograph by Cláudia Pucci. (Click images to enlarge.)

To wit, França’s benches are cut from oversize Pequis stumps, where the wood’s natural peaks and valleys seemingly contour to the shape of human body. Likewise Krantz, an architect who only started making furniture seven years ago, creates sinuous armchairs and free-form dining tables from stacked layers of sustainable hard woods that appear to be molded from clay. "My work doesn’t take geometric form," explains Krantz, whose hand-carved designs have been compared with that of celebrated American furniture designers Sam Maloof and George Nakashima. Whether it is a table, chaise or chair, "each piece is really free and organic because I try to stay close to the original tree," she says.

Top: The Sereia chaise by Brazilian Paulo Alves. Bottom: Alves used vertically inlaid woods to create his Cercadinho credenza. Photography by Pierré Yves Refalo. (Click images to enlarge)

Meanwhile both Paulo Alves and Sergio Fahrer, whose furniture is often linked to mid-20th-century Scandinavian design, prefer to work with layered hardwood veneers—all from sustainable sources—but in completely different ways than their forebears. Alves’ geometric tables and buffets are often modern and modular, constructed in a way that best articulates the wood’s amazing color range. Whereas Fahrer, who started out hand-making violins while a student at Musicians Institute of Technology (MIT) in Los Angeles, manipulates veneers into shapely chaises and bentwood chairs, some of which appear to balance on a single aluminum leg. Fahrer’s first, and still favorite, furniture commission was his Blues chair, which the designer laminated with 500 plastic guitar picks he melted on a stove to get the chair’s multicolored finish. More recently his sleek, curvaceous Paso Doble chaise was a finalist for last year’s iF Design Products Award, one of the most prestigious design prizes in the world. "People tell me that the technique I use is from Scandinavia and I try to explain to them that the lamination technology was actually developed in Brazil," says Fahrer, who uses Brazilian hardwoods and water-based glue, not resin, so all of his organically inspired designs are also eco-friendly.

Top: Architect Julia Krantz, also out of Brazil, put innovative spins on the Tripé chair. Bottom: The Baum table. Photography by Andres Otero. (Click images to enlarge)

"Sergio Fahrer is like the Gio Ponti of Brazil," offers Zesty Meyers, referring to the Italian midcentury modernist. Meyers, owner of the r 20th Century furniture gallery in New York, is the distributor of Hugo França’s designs in the U.S. "There have been numerous articles about new design coming out of the BRIC countries—Brazil, Russia, India and China—because these countries have newfound wealth and their economies are growing. But when you look at culture and taste, Brazil blows all the others out of the water," he says, noting that Brazilian furniture design is on a threshold of major discovery. "The craftsmanship and connoisseurship is there," he says. "And the herd mentality doesn’t exist, so they can devote the time to create really amazing, unique pieces."

One could make a similar case for new furniture designs coming out of the Netherlands, Africa, parts of Asia and, in some cases, even America. Case in point, last December in Miami the Barry Friedman gallery of New York joined forces with Droog (pronounced Drock) Design of Amsterdam to showcase the work of new Dutch furniture makers. The collaboration, called Smart Deco, included the work of Niels van Eijk and Miriam van der Lubbe, who cooperated in the design of an elongated solid wood desk, called Godogan (the title of the Indonesian fairy tale about the frog prince), where more than half of the desktop and side featured an elaborate hand-carved scene of frogs and other creatures from the fairy tale. Equally artful as well as functional, the desk, which was handmade in Indonesia, is one of a limited edition of 20 offered today by the Dutch duo.
"If you look at contemporary design, at the real forefront are London’s Royal College of Art (RCA) and the Design Academy Eindhoven," where many of Amsterdam’s finest furniture makers were schooled, says Marc Benda, former director of the Barry Friedman gallery—which offers Dutch design, including that of Marcel Wanders. "Marcel Wanders is one of the most famous people on the design circuit but he has never exhibited on a limited-edition basis," says Benda, who explains how Wanders took a single piece of crocheted cloth, coated it in epoxy resin for strength and durability, then molded it into the shape of an armchair. Another Dutchman, Joris Laarman, crafted an aluminum Bone chair whose design mimics the way bones develop, growing at the seat, back and base of legs where strength is needed, and shrinking where it is not.

Top: Amsterdam-based Joris Laarman referenced human bones in his Bone chair. Bottom: Dutchman Marcel Wanders’ epoxied-cloth Crochet chair. (Click images to enlarge)

"Laarman, who is only 27 years old, took a sciencebased approach to furniture design," says Benda. "Basically he wanted to create the perfect chair with the help of an algorithm that determines how bones grow. And by applying this algorithm to furniture he was able to design pieces with minimal material input." Because Laarman’s aluminum chair was so complex and had no center point from which to start to build, Benda says "he had to find a supplier to the European airspace industry to cast it." The designer used the same algorithm to create his complementary Bone chaise—this time cast from clear polyurethane-based resin for a completely different look.

Among U.S.-based furniture makers, African-born Hughes N’cho-Allepot and Daniel Omondi share a similar heritage. Nevertheless, the two are polar opposites in terms of their approach to design. N’cho-Allepot, whose family moved to Paris when he was five, has an obvious affinity for Art Déco. But the designer, who relocated to the U.S. in 1999 and recently took up residence in Oak Park, Ill., added his own boxy, platform-style simplicity to the familiar design style. N’cho-Allepot’s Lagos daybed, for instance, is a long, leather-upholstered platform with boxy, white-oak arms, legs and base, while his low-lying African padauk wood bench incorporates square cushions upholstered in antique silk velvet.

Top: The Lagos daybed by African-born, Illinois-based Hughes N’cho-Allepot. Bottom: His silk-cushioned padauk wood Milos bench. (Click images to enlarge)

By comparison, Daniel Omondi, who learned his woodworking skills in his father’s workshop as a child growing up in Mombasa, Kenya, works in a style that is more complex and clearly an amalgam of his African heritage and American citizenry. Having lived and worked in Brattleboro, Vt., since 2001, Omondi mixes exotic bambakofe and mvole woods from Kenya with more conventional cherry, walnut and maple from the U.S., which he combines in Shaker-inspired furnishings infused with elaborate East African carvings.

Omondi’s console table combines African wood and the Shaker sensibilities of his Vermont home base. Photography by Jeff Bird. (Click images to enlarge)

"Most of the carving I do is Bajun, which is a type of door carving that was introduced in the 16th century at a time when there was a lot of trading, and influence, between the Indians, Arabs, Portuguese and the local people of East Africa," says Omondi, who studied original Oman and Indian door designs on actual homes in the town of Lamu, where many of the 500-year-old doors are still in use. The style is different than typical American "chip carving," he says, "because chip carving is done with a knife, mostly on soft woods, whereas I work with different chisels on hardwood." The carvings, which are either geometric or floral-inspired, are also unique, as is the way Omondi combines the two, such as a coffee table with floral carved legs and a geometric-edged top or a mahogany four-poster bed with richly detailed head- and footboards.

Top: A carved hall table by Daniel Omondi. Bottom: Omondi created a mahogany four-poster with unexpected details such as a sloping headboard and hand-carved ball finials. Photography by Jeff Bird. (Click images to enlarge)

Unlike Brazil’s Hugo França, Omondi has never had to carve one of his designs from a tree stump the size of a house. Most of his hardwoods come from lumber mills that source from the rich woodlands of New England. Nevertheless, he insists he can sometimes see one of his ornately carved consoles or coffee tables locked within a particular piece of lumber. "Instinctively I know I have to design something to work around it, not the other way around," says Omondi, who recently carved a demi console from a rare piece of Brazilian ambaya. "When you have something special like that, it’s important to keep it as natural as possible."

Hugo França through r 20th Century, 212.343.7979, www.r20thcentury.com
Julia Krantz, Paulo Alves, Sergio Fahrer through Sampa Design, +55.11.3062.1223, www.sampadesign.com.br
Niels van Eijk, Miriam van der Lubbe, Marcel Wanders, Joris Laarman through Barry Friedman Ltd., 212.794.8950, www.barryfriedmanltd.com
Daniel Omondi Woodworks 802.254.5248 or 802.380.2633, www.omondiwood.com
Hughes N’cho-Allepot Home 708.660.9066, www.hughesncho-allepothome.com