To make sense of Baker + Hesseldenz Studio’s varied and non-linear furniture collections, just look at its co-principals, the Tucson-based couple Scott Baker and Mary Ann Hesseldenz. Baker is the descendant of classically trained Quaker furniture makers, while Hesseldenz cut her teeth as a fashion designer in New York’s gritty ‘80s. Those influences pervade the studio’s first line of furniture, five pieces that blend traditional craft and materials such as bronze and walnut with punk rock flourishes like the white frizzy seating on the lucite Casper swivel chair.
This year, Baker and Hesseldenz expanded the eclectic collection with ten new designs. A few standouts include the Impact Table, named for the crater-like intervention on the surface, whose open-endedness “aims to inspire deeper thought and meaningful conversations between those who gather around it,” Baker says. The Torta Ottoman is a compact footstool inspired by a puff pastry atop a dessert plate, meticulously crafted in solid walnut or rift-sawn white oak and available in a round and triangle form. A sequel to the popular View sofa, the plush View 2.0 riffs on the original’s clever design—devised specifically for unencumbered lounging in front of large picture windows—with a contemporary, clean-lined aesthetic and low-slung ebonized walnut plinth.
