JHG + AWD stool

Object: Revolution Furniture’s JHG + AWD stool

Location: Jesse Gerard’s apartment

Background: I wrote about Jesse Gerard for “Making It” in the Philadelphia Inquirer. Gerard now makes custom, limited edition speakers under the label Carrot Grant. (He and his speakers were one of two Pennsylvania makers featured in Fast Company‘s United States of Design iPad app earlier this year.)

When I interviewed Jesse for the Inquirer, he was also working on fabricating violin bows for a bowmaker in Brazil using the rapid prototyping machines at NextFab. In 2008 he won the Student Design Competition associated with Collab’s annual Design Excellence Award, given that year to Frank Gehry. Gerard channeled Gehry’s layering technique to design a serpentine, plywood bench.

During our interview he told me about Revolution Furniture, his senior project at University of the Arts, and I knew I wanted to write about it.

Context: You can see more pieces in the Revolution Furniture series here. Each piece is a take on the milking stool. Each has an identical stainless-steel seat. Gerard spun the seats, then invited five local designers and craftspeople to create riffs on the standard trio of legs. The results are poetic. One is inspired by the traditionally turned legs of a Windsor chair. Another has two birch dowel legs and a third of bulbous, handblown glass. That creates an awesome tension — the one glass leg is like a ripe, unpopped balloon presented to a mischievous toddler.

The legs on this post’s featured stool (above) are by Tony Darnell, a local woodworker who shows at the Wexler Gallery. In the statement provided by Gerard, Darnell says, “My work questions how traditional furniture archetypes are ‘supposed’ to look, drawing inspiration from repetition, geometry, balance, counterbalance and building structures. I attempt to create structure that acts more like a line drawings. Turning a piece of furniture into a functional piece of sculpture.”

To me it looks like a doodle — the doodle of an architect or someone else who dreams in right angles.