Here, we ask designers to take a selfie and give us an inside look at their life.
Age: 34
Occupation: Furniture and lighting designer.
Instagram: @jeffmartinjoinery
Hometown: Edmonton, Alberta.
Studio location: Vancouver, Canada.
Describe what you make: We are engaged in a materials-based design practice. Analyzing and responding to the nature of materials in often obscure or invented ways. We have an equal approach to work in aesthetics, craft, and engineering.
The most important thing you’ve designed to date: Our most significant work has been in the past two years. The Neolith range is really compelling from an engineering perspective. Our work in Excavated Furniture and Excavated Vessels is our most material-specific work—it’s a great closed-system operation with many layers producing a range of objects from cabinet pulls to furniture bases and blown glass vessels. Our longer-standing products, which I also love, pay the bills and keep the studio moving. So I suppose it’s our four design systems: Neolith, Excavated, Shaker, and Painted.
Describe the problem your work solves: Our work isn’t really solving anything. It’s more about resolving fascinating elemental material. Our choices around sustainability are great, but also secondary to making really interesting work.
Describe the project you are working on now: We’re wrapping up five new ideas for blowing glass into very odd molds, which we’re shipping down to Tacoma for our residency at the Museum of Glass. Not to give away too much, but we’ll be playing with sandstone, home-made bricks, torn silicon, cast mirrors, and excavated cork.
A new or forthcoming project we should know about: I’m really excited to launch Cymatic Lenses in New York during ICFF, which opens on May 19. It’s our first foray into a lighting design system and we’re really excited by the results. They feel very much not at all—yet completely from—our studio. It’s exciting new territory for us.
What you absolutely must have in your studio: Work from others. We have a growing collection of insane work from my heroes stacked behind my desk. Mostly trades, some won at auction, a few bought outright. I find it encouraging to have work by my icons in my zone.
What you do when you’re not working: I love time with family. I have a funny young daughter and brilliant wife with whom I soak up my time.
Sources of creative envy: I am mad for Takuro Kuwata’s work. It’s so punk and courageous. Also, my studio director Dave bubbles with creative energy. He always has a range of solutions for whatever we’re engaged with.
The distraction you want to eliminate: I don’t find myself too distracted these days. Having a kid made me cull the unnecessary activities from my life and work.
Concrete or marble? Custom blend of cementitious marble.
High-rise or townhouse? I’m moving from an apartment to a townhouse at the moment, so there it is.
Remember or forget? If it’s someone’s name, I’m terrible. If it’s their work, I know it in an instant.
Aliens or ghosts? My favorite book is Galapagos by lo-fi sci-fi legend Kurt Vonnegut. And (spoiler alert) it’s about the ghost of a seal one million years in the future. So, both I guess. Alien ghosts.
Dark or light? Colorful.
