MAKE :: Andrew Stansell Design, Metal Arts & Crafts Furniture

AN INTERVIEW WITH STEEL FURNITURE MAKER ANDREW STANSELL

Creations by Andrew Stansell strive for a sense of simplicity, honesty and authenticity. His furniture offers simple linear forms, including metal adaptations of traditional wooden furniture designs. Andrew seeks to achieve this through well thought-out design and a balanced use of proportion. I was fortunate enough to come across his work online and was excited to discuss it with him in detail.

Bryan: Can you talk about how Andrew Stansell Design began and what got you started?

Andrew: I’ve been fascinated by furniture design and objects for most of my life. This probably dates back to furnishings found in my childhood home, which was accented with 1950’s modern era designs from George Nelson and Herman Miller and even a few light sculptures by Isamu Noguchi. Some of my earliest inspirations came from family trips to an imports store on St. Armand’s Key, Florida, an early precursor to today’s mega-imports stores. I just remember being fascinated at the beautiful and unusual pieces there and that inspiration has stayed with me over the years. 

Around that time, my father, an architect, designed our family dining table and chairs and had them fabricated from metal. I “helped” him paint those frames (in the way that 6-year-olds do), stayed out of the way while his friends installed a heavy granite top on the dining table and then later held the other end of the board or a flashlight while he worked on countless other projects. Somewhere along the way, I managed to pick up a few skills myself - from industrial arts, drafting classes and wood and metal shop in high school, to working during college in the wood shop of a friend’s grandfather, an accomplished boat builder and custom hardwood cabinet maker. Since then, I’ve pretty much always been working with my hands, repairing or building things.

I guess that I actually began the business of furniture making one winter in the mid 1990’s, when I had the idea of plucking a snow covered tomato cage from the garden, covering it with tissue paper and adding a lamp socket. I was so enchanted by the result that I began making more and more complicated pieces, with hand made Japanese papers and more sophisticated hardware. A furniture designer/sculptor acquaintance taught me the basics of brazing and welding, and I sorted out how to do polished looking work. I eventually had a small line of light sculptures, which I sold through a rep at the Merchandise Mart in Chicago. 

I got my first real studio and metal fabrication equipment when I was commissioned to build two 39-foot long light sculptures for a Miami restaurant. After this project was completed, I began experimenting with making tables from metal plate and tubing found at a local (and sadly now defunct) shop that sold scrap metal and other “useable materials.” Somewhere along the way, I transitioned from trying to figure out what I could make from the stuff I found at the scrap store to actually designing and building pieces with greater intention. I pored over design books, learned the importance of balance and proportion and generally absorbed what I could. By that point, I had been exposed to the work of a couple of metal furniture artists who were doing really interesting metal interpretations of traditional furniture designs – one Shaker doing designs and the other doing sort of post modernist takes on Louis XIV consoles, cabinets and bureaus in steel, copper, stone and wood. I had always admired the earnest lines and proportions of Mission and Arts & Crafts and was inspired to try my hand at making my own metal interpretations, while being careful to steer clear of their work.

Like pretty much everyone else, I began selling pieces by word of mouth, doing some custom work, and things just started happening. When I didn’t have time to work in the shop, I spent my time putting together a website and preparing the other things I would need to establish a business. I also spent a lot of time drawing and came up with lots of other concepts. Although I’ve built most of these, I still have a backlog of half a dozen or so that are waiting to get done.  In the meantime, I amassed enough pieces in a consistent vein to present a line of Mission Style furniture in metal. I’ve recently had enough success to have the good fortune of being able to quit my day job and begin doing this full time.

Bryan: What sets you apart from what other furniture makers are doing?

Andrew: I suppose it’s mostly materials, design and approach. I don’t see many other people out there doing pieces like these or using clear-coated steel in the way I do. For such an unassuming material, I think steel has amazing texture, a simple beauty and honesty about it. I’ve also learned how to produce finished looking pieces without out the pitfalls of the tooling and grinder marks that appear on the work of many metal furniture artists.

Another thing I do differently is I often actually proportion pieces in the shop instead of on the drawing board. Although I usually start out with at least a sketch, I will cut out frame members, lay them out on the bench or floor, move them until the proportion feels right, and then build the piece like that. I just don’t get the same sense of what’s right working from scaled drawings the way I do looking at the color, texture and size of the actual materials themselves. 

Bryan: It seems obvious that your work is inspired by American Arts & Crafts design, but what else inspires you?

Andrew: I find inspiration pretty much everywhere I go - in all sorts of things from nature itself to the bridges and mechanical structures in more urban settings to pure design in art and architecture. I love earth tones and organic shapes and textures, glazed, patina and burnished objects. I have a fondness for industrial design and mechanical things. I feel drawn toward old, hand made things that are well crafted and admire pretty much anything that is designed well. 

I have always been a fan of Japanese design and was hugely influenced by the simple, natural, organic stone sculptures and paper light sculptures of Isamu Noguchi and the soaring elegance of humble materials at the hand of architect Tadao Ando. I have long admired modern architecture and furniture and was strongly influenced by modern designs in a Chicago furniture store in the late 80’s and early 90’s called “City” (which later became Luminaire). Other design inspirations include the American Studio Furniture Movement and Tansu design, as well as a host of European modern furniture designs.

Finally, seeing people using traditional materials in unusual ways inspires me. I think a turning point for me came when I saw a pine hutch made by a friend’s brother entirely from stock moldings (lath, baluster, backband and casing). At the time, I didn’t have access to a shop and the idea of making furniture seemed impossible because real woodworking generally requires fairly sophisticated tools and equipment and a sizeable space to work. But this guy was able to create an impressive cabinet in his basement with limited tools by making only cross cuts and nailing and gluing the parts together. That got me thinking outside the traditional woodworking box of having to make every single component of a piece and to see that you could do amazing things with over the counter type materials. Since then, I’ve been inspired by any unusual use of ordinary materials.

Bryan: How do you go about the actual process of developing new pieces?

Andrew: There isn’t any one process – it seems to run the entire gamut of possibilities. Sometimes it’s what you’d think - a concept that I come up with on my own, sketch out and develop based on a geometric form or whatever. Or, I can be inspired by an existing design and incorporate elements of this into a piece - I’m doing a bookcase now that was inspired by window details from the porch of a bungalow in my old neighborhood. 

Sometimes, it’s a more organic creative process. I go into the shop and bend two pieces of metal, hold them together in a way that looks interesting, weld them and then just keep repeating this process until the work feels complete. On other occasions, I see a table or a console and think that would look amazing made from metal and stone and I set out to adapt it. Sometimes, it’s an idea that just sort of cooks on the back burner, waiting for me to get around to it. Sometimes, it’s just a doodle I made during a phone call that shows an interesting form, and I might tack it to the wall somewhere in my studio and wait for the right time and place for the form to emerge. It might be months or even years, but eventually the concept does get used.

And sometimes, I just take an existing theme and experiment with it until some thing new emerges. I was recently asked by a customer to come up with a design for a round table base using the pattern language from some other pieces we had done. I did a series of sketches – some of them just stick figures - exploring permutations of how the patterns could fit together. From these, I fleshed out elevations and 3/4 views of 4 alternative pieces. She liked the fourth concept and I plan to begin offering the first one with a glass top soon.

Bryan: What are your future plans for Andrew Stansell Design?

Andrew: I’m heading a in few different directions right now, many of them Arts & Crafts based but some far more organic or modern. 

In terms of Arts & Crafts, I’m mostly doing tables, consoles and cabinets at the moment. I’m adding a large trestle dining table to the line with a stone top (with a “honed” finish limestone and slate from a subtly textured earth tone palette). I plan to do built-ins made of metal so that instead of seeing the usual quarter-sawn white oak Chicago Bungalow room dividers, dining hutches and bookcases banking fireplaces, you would have clear-coated metal pieces.

I’d also like to branch out into seating, bed frames and dressers as well. Right now, I’m finishing up a 2 door Mission cabinet with leaded glass panels, working out plans for a grandfather clock based on an existing Mission design (with real mechanical works) and contemplating adapting some Tansu concepts to metal. 

I’m also working on some more modern designs– mostly dining and coffee table but some storage units as well – using metal and some unusual industrial materials (I’m not saying what for now). I have a fairly steady diet of custom work I do for architects and interior designers and am in the process of fabricating some really beautiful galvanized Arts & Crafts gate and fence sections designed by some architect friends. Although I haven’t done any in awhile, I’d love to get back to making some larger scale light sculptures. Other than that, I’m just going to see what presents itself and do what seems right next! pm

::Andrew's work is available at www.andrewstanselldesign.com

Images copyright Andrew Stansell Design and FlintChaney.com

Bryan Kelly is a co-founder and contributor to PrairieMod. He lives in a super cool 1970's ranch in West Suburban Chicago. You can email him at bryan@prairiemod.com

Comments

[Leslie Topping]

I am looking for some creative crafty projects with welded economy fencing.