Where every piece starts
People imagine a furniture designer sketching. A piece of ours starts somewhere less romantic: with a list of what the last one got wrong, a stack of samples, and a seat height.
By Mara Esposito2 min read
Workshop / Design
The list
Every piece in the range has a file of what customers told us over the years: the arm is too low to rest a mug on, the drawer sticks in a damp house, the bed creaks after a move. A new piece starts with that file open. It is unglamorous, and it is why the range is 42 pieces and not 400.
The seat height
Before there is a shape there is a number. Dining chairs sit at 46 cm, lounge chairs at 42, sofas at 44. A sofa that is beautiful at 40 cm is a sofa older people cannot get out of, so the number is fixed first and the shape is drawn around it.
The drawing
The drawing is done on a screen, in 3 dimensions, because that is what the router reads. But it is checked in cardboard first: a full-size mock-up, taped together in an afternoon, that we sit in. Cardboard tells you in 10 minutes what a rendering never will, which is whether the arm is where your arm is.
The samples
The wood and fabric samples live on the desk, not in a drawer, because a piece is drawn in a material from the first line. Walnut wants thinner legs than oak, since it is the dearer wood and the leg is where it shows. Boucle wants a simpler shape than a flat weave, because the texture is already doing a lot.
The first one
The first chair off the bench goes into the Riverton showroom for 3 months before the range gets it. People sit in it, and we watch. Then it gets its number, and a story like this one gets written about how it is made.
