Over the past decade, while Oliver Haslegrave was busy establishing his Brooklyn design practice, Home Studios, as a go-to firm for crafting some of New York’s most cult-favorite bars and restaurants, the former fiction editor was taking exploratory trips to Greece. They were a necessary reprieve—Haslegrave spent day and night building out every aspect of the influential studio’s interior projects by hand. On recent trips to the remote Cycladic Island of Andros, he returned to his roots as a storyteller by crafting a six-piece chair collection packed with personality yet steeped in the traditions of their locales.
“Just as taking a portrait can reveal one’s inner dimension, building a chair can suggest a story of time and place that goes far beyond its most basic function and utility,” Haslegrave says of collection’s six wooden chairs, called Aprovato, whose distinct forms reflect an imagined inner life. Each piece pays homage to an area he explored in Andros—Amos, Chora, and Vitali among them—and draws from the magical realism of mythology, the placid lull of Aegean waves, and ancient Cycladic figurines. “My earliest interests were making, collage, portraits, and storytelling,” he says. “In creating these works, I’m able to combine all of those aspects of my life.”
