When Jonathan Nesci was 23 — with a one-year-old at home, and working as a forklift operator at FedEx in Chicago while attending night school for 3-D drafting at a community college — one of his coworkers gave him a fateful nudge: “He knew I wanted to design furniture, and he was like, ‘You can do it!!’,” recalls Nesci, now 31. And so he cold-emailed Richard Wright, founder of the eponymous Chicago auction house, and promoted the heck out of himself until he landed a job managing Wright’s restoration department, where he stayed for five years before founding his own studio in early 2012. As he tells it, his cheerleader at FedEx deserves substantial credit for inspiring him to take the leap that changed his life. But to know Nesci is to realize that no matter what happened, the results would have been the same — he was destined to be a designer. Having started dealing mid-century as a hobby at age 18, by the time he landed at Wright he was already “living and breathing furniture,” he says.
Wright turned out to be where he learned how to actually make it, too. In the restoration department, he not only got face time with iconic 20th-century works, he also got a front-row look at the intricacies of how they were constructed. At the same time, he was growing increasingly interested in minimalist art and sculpture, and the degree to which those pieces rely on materiality and process. “The forms are very simple, but the awe factor lies in how well they’re made,” he notes. Those became important driving factors behind his own first collection of monolithic metal tables, shelves, and stools, which he risked $20,000 to bring to ICFF in 2007, and which landed him his ongoing collaboration with Ugo Alfano of Chicago’s Casati Gallery. He’s since shown with Casati at Milan fairs and in Design Miami booths, and is currently working with the gallery on a new pair of bronze chairs and a three-fin copper lamp. (The rest of his pieces he gets produced by local workshops in and around Chicago, though he’s currently based a few hours away in tiny Scottsburg, Indiana.)
Nesci’s newer pieces still lean towards minimal, geometric forms and process-based concepts — one of his new projects revolves around endlessly variable profiles generated by the Golden Ratio — but lately he’s been looking much, much further back than the ’60s for inspiration: He’s been meticulously Googling and studying images of ancient and prehistorical objects, from primitive tools and female fertility statues to seemingly unbuildable Incan stone walls. “There’s a constant curiosity that drives everything I do,” he explains. We asked Nesci to tell us what else drives him and his work — check out the slideshow at right for the result.
Tony Smith’s Gracehopper, 1961/1988: “This massive welded-steel geometric sculpture by Tony Smith was prominently placed on Louisville’s waterfront as a gift to the city by the Humana Foundation in 1989. When I first moved to the Louisville area from Chicago in 2009, this sculpture made me feel at home. I’ll always be from Chicago, but Louisville has great history and has played an important role in what I’m doing now. The sculpture is numbered 2/3 and was posthumously produced by Lippincott Inc. for a million dollars.”
Tony Smith’s Gracehopper, 1961/1988: “I was first introduced to Tony Smith’s work when I was working at Wright. Four yellow-painted cardboard models came up for auction and I thought they were the coolest things. The titles of all four were ‘Yellowbird,’ and they were formed from a series of tetrahedron cells. This had an early effect on my work — I was instantly sucked into the endless systems that geometry provides.”
Tony Smith’s Gracehopper, 1961/1988: “Two years later I launched a series of aluminum furniture forms at ICFF based on the same set of angles. The initial show included the Tidal Shelf (pictured), Jack Stool, H1 coffee table, Prop Bookends, and the A_Stool. These continue to be my best sellers 6 years later.”
Nesci’s A_Stool
Italian Design: “Between working for Wright and working with Ugo Alfano of Casati Gallery, I’ve seen and handled some of the most important works of Italian design, including pieces by the late masters of design — Gio Ponti, Carlo Mollino, Ico Parisi, Franco Albini, Gino Sarfatti, Ignazio Gardella, Luigi Caccia Dominioni, Carlo Scarpa, Achille Castiglioni, and Ettore Sottsass (pictured)…”
Italian Design: “…as well as contemporary works by Angelo Mangiarotti (pictured), Andrea Branzi, Claudio Salocchi, Alessandro Mendini, Michele De Lucchi, and Mauro Fabbro. Italian designs have many layers of intrigue, and their proportions and connection details are unmatched.”
Italian Design: “The first design of mine produced with Ugo for Casati was my H1 table in mirror-polished bronze. It was launched at Design Miami in 2007 along with works by Branzi, Mangiarotti, and Salocchi. Essentially Ugo was the client, and it’s amazing how strikingly Italian the table ended up looking. A lot of the work he and I have done together has an Italian vibe, but it’s most clear with the H1; I guess it’s inevitable when you put two Italians in the process.”
Another, more recent design for Casati: Nesci’s Golden Variation console, which launched at the Collective Design Fair in New York this past May and is part of the designer’s series of forms based on the Golden Ratio.
Nesci’s GMT-13 table for the design company Field is also based on the Golden Ratio.
Wright Auction catalog, March 2004: “This was my first Wright catalog, given to me by Richard Wright during my interview in early 2004. It represents a pivotal point in my life: I was able to be around these incredible works of design for 5 years, and it made such an impact in my design vocabulary and opened so many doors for me.”
Limestone business card for the Indiana Limestone Company in Bedford, IN: “My late grandfather Hale Olson owned multiple brick companies near Chicago, and this was found in his desk. He built us a large sandbox when we were young and would have fresh sand delivered from his company regularly, and he also made us a large toybox filled with custom-made, hand-sanded wooden blocks. I named my design practice after him as he was highly influential in my upbringing. Ending up living in Indiana made this object that much more special to me.”
Limestone business card for the Indiana Limestone Company in Bedford, IN: “Ugo and I launched the Medium Volume forms — named for how they can be made in many materials and produced in both positive and negative volumes — at PAD Paris in early 2008. When we first showed the pieces we had four carved out of solid limestone and 14 in hot-dipped galvanized steel (pictured). Out of the four that were produced in Indiana limestone, only one of them was delivered intact, and we took that as a sign that limestone isn’t the best material for furniture.
Limestone business card for the Indiana Limestone Company in Bedford, IN: “The form is one of my favorite works and later influenced the Ren Bench, which was produced in rotational-molded plastic and rift-sawn oak in a limited edition for the University of Chicago’s Renaissance Society.”
Ancient Man and the Scottsburg Lowlands: “Recently I discovered that the area I now live in, southern Indiana, has an ancient past. Numerous dwelling artifacts have been found around what used to be an ancient lake near Scottsburg. Many are assumed to be over 13,000 years old. I’m interested in how ideas, functions, process, and craftsmanship translate over time, and this curiosity about the past influences my present work. A big part of the curiosity is that the ancient past is an unresolved question. There’s so much we don’t know, and it’s haunting to me.”
20th- to 21st-century art and sculpture: “Nothing stops me like intelligent geometric art based on systems and order. Just a pyramid shape, icosahedron, truncated tetrahedron, or any other geometric solid doesn’t move me; it has to be deeper than that to spark my interest. When art involves complex systems and processes, it influences my design thinking.” Pictured: Homage to the Square by Josef Albers20th- to 21st-century art and sculpture: “Process, material, technique, and the ability to be fabricated using local industry is what I find most interesting. Some of my favorite works are by Josef Albers, Tony Smith, Clement Meadmore (pictured)…”
20th- to 21st-century art and sculpture: “… Robert Mangold (pictured), Brancusi, Liam Gillick…”
20th- to 21st-century art and sculpture: “… Scott Burton (pictured), Robert Wilson, Roni Horn…”
20th- to 21st-century art and sculpture: “… and Tauba Auerbach.”
Paperweight: “This paper weight was a gift from my wife Christine before we were married. I’ve used it as a hammer, a metal-stamping test for my HALE metal stamp — everything but weighing down paper. I like the wear it’s developed over the years from unexpected uses; the saying impressed on it (‘What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?’) combined with that wear is somewhat of a strange testament to my journey. I learn a lot by doing and I love seeing something develop from the wisdom of past mistakes.”
Isamu Noguchi’s hot-dipped galvanized works for Gemini G.E.L.: “These forms were created in quarter-inch-thick steel plates that were hand cut from wood templates Noguchi created. The plates were welded together and then dipped in molten zinc. I’ve found this finish so beautiful; it wears wonderfully over time and adds a layer of visual warmth to what could be perceived as a cold object. These works were done in limited editions and produced by Gemini in L.A., and some of the forms are still available.”
Isamu Noguchi’s hot-dipped galvanized works for Gemini G.E.L.: “The finishing process on them is one of the most banal industrial processes out there, but so far this is my favorite process I’ve worked with. I look forward to doing more with it. The A.P. of my galvanized Medium Volume is one my favorite works of mine that I live with at home.”
Nesci’s Golden Variation men’s ring — the first edition of which, shown here, is exclusive to the Sight Unseen shop — features an extruded profile based on the Golden Ratio that has endless potential mathematical variations. Click here to buy one in the Sight Unseen shop!
Believe it or not, Los Angeles–based designer Brendan Ravenhill owes the success of his Cord Lamp, at least in part, to Etsy. It’s not that the designer spends his days hawking the spare, Prouvé-inspired insta-classic on the online crafters’ marketplace. But a few years ago, Ravenhill was coerced by his wife to participate in something she’d created on the site called Mail Order Pals. “It was basically a penpal for purchase," Ravenhill told me when I visited his Echo Park home and studio earlier this summer. "People could buy you in order to receive a letter or a surprise package in the mail.” After someone “bought” Ravenhill, he went to the hardware store and whipped up an elegantly simple wooden swing-arm lamp in one night. Upon seeing his creation, the designer’s wife convinced him it was just too nice to send. The penpal ended up getting a wire sculpture of a penguin, and the couple began living with the lamp. In the months that followed, Ravenhill became obsessed with the design, refining and tweaking it in his head to the point that by the time he was approached to create a piece to show with the American Design Club at a trade fair in New York, he was able to fashion a prototype in just one week. The final lamp — composed primarily of porcelain, cast aluminum, a cloth cord, and a bare bulb — packs and ships flat and sells for less than $200 at places like The Future Perfect, cementing the young designer’s status as a rising talent to watch.
As the youngest child of a Parisian architect — with three older brothers working in the same field — Victoria Wilmotte had one thing going for her when she started studying furniture design at London's RCA four years ago. But she also had a few handicaps: she was only 20 years old, she had just been rejected from Paris's ENSCI school, and her professor at RCA, Jurgen Bey, couldn't comprehend her strange working methods. Obsessed with materials and surfaces, she wanted to spend all her time in the workshop, skipping the thinking and brainstorming part and going directly to prototyping. "Jurgen Bey was really into concepts," says Wilmotte, now 24. "He was more about a table telling stories, but I only wanted to talk technically. He basically said, 'I don’t understand you. But continue.'"
Max Lipsey’s father is an architect, and his mother is an artist, but it might be Murray Moss who’s most responsible for turning the Eindhoven-based, Aspen, Colorado native on to design.
