Furniture as Emotional Archive

writing JENNA SCHNITZLER furniture design MARINA PENG

a list of objects —ceramic townhousekitty ring holder

coiled rope boxskinny ladder shelf

drafting table with a wobbly legtiny floral armchair

Finding, making, and using furniture and objects becomes an intimate exercise as we grow up. We collect them from family, friends, and strangers in the creation of our spaces —nesting and layering pieces with varied histories that otherwise would not have met. Strangers become family when combined in a home – opa’s bedside table would never have met MÅLM if you hadn’t brought them together in your most personal space.

Combining materiality and functionality with storytelling, furniture (new and old) acts as an archive that preserves memory. Furniture complements our lives and supports us as story-makers—holding, saving, and remembering stories that we might otherwise forget.

We rarely account for the function of furniture beyond supporting our daily patterns, those daily patterns that become imprinted on our objects quite literally through wear. Less visible are our associations with these objects, able to capture the spirit of squeezing into the same chair to read with your sister, or smelling the bindings of your first few books on the shelf.

Furniture is passed down as a history of its own, not so different from oral, written, or sung stories shared by a culture. A familial culture is created through the generational use of these objects, gaining scratches and new imprints with each passing owner, and a composite culture is generated as we seek furniture with stories separate from our own. The joy in finding vintage or used furniture is in the mystery of the previous users and our ability to imagine the life a sofa has lived before coming into ours.

Projecting and imagining these stories has its own magic—we are able to curate a spatial narrative in our homes that lives between reality and our imagination.

Homemaking, in the most modern sense of the word, has become the process of selectively choosing what we live in, what we see everyday, finding furniture and objects that make our inhabited spaces feel like home. An important part of this process, now, is the design of highly functional and expressive contemporary furniture. An admiration of furniture grows from the appreciation of how physical surroundings interplay with our everyday, and the creation of special, useful objects to facilitate living. And in this interaction, the art of designing furniture has its place. Making furniture has always been, and continues to be, an incredible art form and outlet for hand making. Creating functional and beautiful furniture is not based only in aesthetics, but true usefulness - there is extreme beauty in creating furniture that needs no explanation or instruction, that fits the body perfectly and has a clear use. Sloping the seat of a chair just so, making an armrest the perfect height, defending against wobbles, making furniture to be incredibly useful is often far from the mind of the user.

a list of objects —set of coasterswalking cane

work benchterracotta pot table

wood draped over steel frametiny floral armchair

In conversation with Marina Peng, an alumna and furniture designer (among many other things), we discussed the desire of designers to create special objects that will live in our memories just as vibrantly as the memories themselves, and the consideration of future relevance and use in the design process.

Initially, a designer hopes to create something functional, durable, usable, which is paired with an expressive process of making. Working out wobbles, designing for comfort and use, she spoke to the idea that, just as designers forty or fifty years ago were creating objects in the hopes of relevancy and continued use, so are designers today. Simultaneously though, designers are artists with strong visual connections, preferences and styles, each with a signature aesthetic, and furniture is art. Strongly linked to both sculpture and ceramics, Marina spoke about the recent work of Eny Lee Parker, a designer currently working in Savannah, Georgia, who centers her furniture work around the potter’s wheel. Building up terracotta bases that are functional vessels, then capping them with glass to create surfaces, Parker plays between traditional methods of making and modern assembly to create useful, meaningful objects that are exquisitely hand made.

Herself favoring the ability of furniture to form around contrast, Marina’s designs are often oriented around a play between strong, linear edges and heavy organic forms – noting that even though furniture style may now be less ornate and more material focused, each designer’s practice is grounded in a history of making and hoping.

The growing force of women in design, and specifically furniture design, has created a new balance in the homemaking process. Full circle involvement from design to use creates an expanded realm for women to support and engage in personalized space making. Objects tailored for custom use necessitate a deep understanding of how an individual uses space and relies on things for daily support. Object making, furniture making, thing making, becomes very sensitive and reactive to individuals, when ultimately we just want what we choose and make to be cherished.