"The Meeting Bench"

Design Process

In December, the big bench project I’ve been working on with Aspen Golann finally left my shop and found it’s home at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. The excellent photos of the piece (by Kate Benson) came back and exceeded my expectations. I want to share some of my favorite views.

This piece almost looks like a completely different object depending on the point of view.

From some angles, it looks like a relatively expected bench, and others it becomes a more abstract interplay of lines.

While I wasn’t thrilled that the piece took so long to create, it definitely gave time to find new places to focus and harmonize.

Right now, the piece lives in a corner location, but the curator said it will likely move around the museum, which will give viewers access to the rear views which are some of the most dynamic.

The interplay of the spindles when viewed from this angle was a lovely surprise.

In the fall of 2024, after Aspen asked me to work with her on creating a design to submit for the museum, I found myself bedridden for a couple of weeks. I was quite distraught at the interruption to my schedule, but decided to use the time to focus on the project. I thought it might be interesting to talk a bit about the design process.

I’ve always enjoyed creating benches. Here are a couple of examples.

Rodback Settee 2006

I wasn’t drawn to making windsor chairs through a love of traditional forms or reproduction, but by the organic flow I found in clean lines of the birdcage form. The large scale of benches is a wonderful showcase for the lines to really sing.

I made “Spring Settee” in 2008 for a show in Purchase, New York.

Collection of Gary and Sylvia Bennet

When I started thinking about the MFA project, I didn’t know the parameters besides it being a bench. After a short while, we learned the bench would live in a corner, which gave some distinct limits. I love limits, they inspire me.

I usually try to make a design hit one, maybe two high notes. I don’t want to clutter it up with too many thoughts or ideas. One of the main details, the overlapping crest rails came from a happy accident. I was drawing the crest too fast and the lines from two ends didn’t meet but passed by each other. I thought it was worth exploring and Aspen did as well. There is no roadmap for designing. Much of it is about how long you can stay in that place where you don’t know the solution, or even the goal. The longer you stay there, the more ideas have a chance to coalesce. Aspen had been set on the idea of the spindles passing through the seat, but we didn’t have a way to weave it into the rest of the design. It was after we saw that we could overlap the stretchers the same way we did the crest that the design seemed to have it’s own logic strong enough to follow. All of a sudden, it made sense and from then on it seemed to tell us what it needed as we finished out the design.

For those chair buffs out there, there’s a bit of an in joke around the overlapping crests. The two rod back benches come together to make another form, the birdcage. Obviously this hit my sweet spot as it was the birdcage that first drew me to making chairs.

This is my first chair, made from photos in a magazine of one of Curtis Buchanan’s chairs.

I made this in 1999-2000

If you make it to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the bench lives near the side entrance. You are welcome, as with all of the chairs in the “Please Be Seated” collection, to sit and enjoy the piece. I can’t wait until the paint starts to wear away, there are some lovely surprises waiting.

This piece was a collaboration between Aspen and I, but it took a bunch of help from the talented Annalise Rubida and Eli Barlow to get it done. Thanks to all the people at the MFA for their help and encouragement, especially Michelle Fisher and Daisy Alejandre.