With an innate attraction to spalted (diseased) wood because of its marbled character, Ian Love creates unique furniture and functional art pieces spanning all genus of timber. A constantly evolving practice, Love’s signature hand-chattered imprint finds itself in many of his designs, validating an appreciation of the imperfect in his holistic design concepts and their unconventionally beautiful finished products. Get to know Ian Love and his work in this week’s Anatomy of a Design.
Raymond Paul Schneider: When did you first start to develop this new collection?
Ian Love: I view the pieces I’ve been making for the last few years as one extensive collection. It’s all sculptural furniture and art, all one-of-a-kind and handmade by me. Maybe that’s breaking some rules of the design world, and I’m not sure. But that is my consistent theme.
RPS: What was the overall timeline from conception to achieving the final design?
IL: I would say, as a whole, it took me 2 or 3 years to find my unique style and voice, and in the last two years, I feel like I’ve tapped into that thing that separates me from the pack. Each piece can take anywhere from 2 to 8 weeks to make, depending on the design and material.
RPS: What was your initial inspiration, and where did the idea(s) come from?
IL: It was all inspired by a visit to my friend 20 minutes from me who sells firewood. He has two acres of locally felled trees, and he showed me all these gorgeous trees that were all waiting to get cut up and made into firewood. At the time, I had never made anything before and had been a musician my whole life. After going there, I was inspired by the trees I saw and decided to start going there once a week to collect pieces from him and spent a few years teaching myself how to make sculptural furniture from the material I was getting which is all inspired by the piece of wood I have. That experience made me decide to change my career to what I do now.
RPS: Please describe your overall creative and design process.
IL: For new pieces and designs, it’s usually based on the particular log or piece of wood I have, which is different from other designers. So, the design comes from the material first, then me, then something synergistic between the material and me happens and that’s the magic.
At this point, I have between 5 and 10 shapes and styles that people seem to like and I order custom sizes that I can recreate while still making them unique.
RPS: Did you have a specific audience or theme that you had in mind?
IL: Not necessarily. I do like just having my pieces in homes and being used. It’s a great feeling when someone buys a piece and tells me how much they love living with it. So far, it’s mostly to the trade with some direct-to-end users who get in touch with me to make stuff for their homes. I am represented by Blackman Cruz in LA so they have some pieces in their showroom and I should be having a few pieces in FAIR in New York in the next few months. Also, I have some pieces with the Verso showroom in NY as well.
RPS: Please describe the methods, tools, and materials you used to develop and prototype this design?
IL: It all started and still is a lot mostly an intuitive process that happens as I’m making each piece. I don’t draw and it’s all hand carved, starting with a chainsaw and then working my way down to angle grinders with carving attachments to all kinds of hand gauges and sanders. I try and finish each piece with non-toxic oil or wax mixtures.
Regarding material, most of the wood comes from right where I live, either from my friend I mentioned or from local arborists that fell trees in Long Island. I’m a collector of material so I’m always finding new material where I live.
RPS: Please describe any challenges that affected the design and perhaps steered you to an entirely new final design?
IL: The hardest thing is that the material is organic and I never know how stable it will be until I’m already in the process so that can be complicated but I’ve gotten pretty good at troubleshooting and coming up with solutions over the last few years to make these pieces functional as well as lasting. But every piece creates its own challenges. It’s never boring, for sure!
RPS: Describe your overall brand DNA and Ethos
IL: I think everything I do is highly local, unique, and made with passion and meant to evoke some kind of feeling – hopefully a good one.
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