ASHER ISRAELOW
Design for the modern explorer
Photography: Peter Garritano
Blending his degrees in fine arts and architecture from the Rhode Island School of Design, Asher Israelow creates furniture for the modern explorer. His award-winning work is featured in private collections and boutique hotels as-well-as installations for the New York City Ballet at Lincoln Center. Israelow recently moved with his wife Jamie and their daughter Anais to the Hudson Valley where he builds small batch minimalist pieces that hold intriguing narratives hidden at the surface. We visited with him upstate where he spoke to us about the importance of sustainability and storytelling in his work. Anais helped her father sand his Lincoln chair.
Kiser Barnes: Tell me a little bit about your childhood and what your relationship with your dad was like. Do you notice a difference in your philosophy and approach to fatherhood?
Asher Israelow: I think yes and no. My dad was and is very hands on. But I feel like I am much more so, because my and my wife's relationship is different than his and my mom’s. My mom was definitely the primary caregiver and at a young age was taking care of everything. My dad would go on business trips a lot and sort of take care of the professional side of the house. Being an entrepreneur or running my own business has actually been really great. I can take more time with my child right now. We moved up to Hudson so that we could spend more time together as a family, and my wife and I really divvy out the tasks of having a child much differently [than my parents did]. I think that's actually having an effect on its own in terms of how I take on parenting, because I'm having a much more active role at a much younger age. In retrospect, my dad probably would have really liked to do that. But I think at that point in time, and even just with family dynamics, that was almost unheard of.
KB: You graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design with degrees in art and architecture. How did you end up designing furniture?
AI: So, I still do some architectural work but it's been a very organic transition. It started before transferring to RISD. I actually started at Wesleyan and I was studying sculpture there. When I was transferring, I realized a lot of the work that I was doing was getting larger in scale as far as sculpture went. It's easier to pull that off with an architectural background. A lot of the sculptors I liked were actually trained in architecture, so it seemed to me like that was a good thing to study, but I was never totally convinced I'd become an architect. And then I always just found myself a lot in the woodshop when I was there. I loved building models and I was really digging very deeply into the craft. The models themselves were almost becoming objects rather than just designs, somewhat to the chagrin of a lot of my professors. But at a certain point it just seemed like the sculpture and architecture combined becomes furniture. It's a very similar process to me in terms of the design portion with drawing, thinking about all of the details in scale. But then the tactility of it also speaks to me with not just having to sit in front of a computer all the time.
“I loved building models and I was really digging very deeply into the craft. The models themselves were almost becoming objects rather than just designs, somewhat to the chagrin of a lot of my professors. But at a certain point it just seemed like the sculpture and architecture combined becomes furniture.”
KB: How do you define that narrative for each of your pieces? Talk to me a little bit about storytelling and your work and how maybe that translates to your relationship with Anais.
AI: I love the process of narrative but actually the story itself almost matters less than the fact that there are stories built into work. A lot of the brass inlaying that we do are actual star maps of particular dates that clients choose. At first, I thought I was going be the one choosing every single day, place, and time. You know, like looking up like the star map of the star chart of 2012 when the world's going to end and then I would impose that on a table. Then I realized that these are pieces going to people's homes. They are heirloom quality. We're building them to last for generations and also planning and hoping that the people will pass them on for generations. The stories that are imposed and inlaid into these pieces are also, in some ways, secrets and are part of the family narrative and history of the people that are buying them. I love this process of the language and figuring out language that can actually express intimate secrets that even I, as the maker of the piece, may not know. I don't know if it's an anniversary date or the day that a child was born.
What I'm trying to elicit a lot in the work, and also what I really hope to pass on to my daughter, is that there's a lot about craft and material and actually building pieces that are functional objects, but then also there are a lot of hidden stories built inside each piece and in the wood itself. Woodworking is a process of uncovering the life story of the tree without really understanding the natural inclinations or personality of the single piece of wood that you're dealing with. As soon as you're sensitive to all the different metaphors that exist in the process of construction, it becomes hard not to tell those stories.
KB: On the surface, your work can appear very minimal but that’s often contrasted with a sense of fantasy. You also merge traditional materials with contemporary design. Why are those contrasts important to your work?
AI: I think not being trained as a furniture maker really helped me just on a material level because I didn't know what I was doing when I started. I was experimenting hard and had lot of really glorious failures. But the experimentation process was necessary for me to create a language that I was really comfortable working in, and mixing a lot of materials is something that people who are traditionally trained in crafts really try not to do.
Originally, I was doing the inlays in wood and then I realized that the mixture of metal and wood is a really wonderful combination. It has its own physical and chemical properties that are different than either material would have on their own because they all exist in a relationship. The first time, I inlaid just a tiny star map in black walnut and brass when I was trying to figure out the process. I was actually really disappointed with the final result after working on it for two days. I sanded it and was really digging into it. Then I turned out the lights. I was going home for the day and there was just this really faint glimmer of light in the shop left over and the only thing that was shining was the star map on this piece of wood. You could barely see the wood and the very low light reflection of brass, specifically, made the entire thing jump out at me. I realized, "oh my god, you can only really see this star map at night!” I realized that it actually comes alive at certain times of the day, and then I really started to understand how those two different materials play with reflectivity.
KB: One of the things we talked about is the fact that every new dad discovers a world of foreign baby objects and accessories, designed mostly to be functional and targeted to moms. As a craftsman and a builder, I’m curious to hear your perspective on design for kids and parents and your thoughts on some missed design opportunities for dads.
AI: I think all of the design opportunities are missed opportunities for dads right now. I'd say there's very little design that is going for fatherhood. It seems to me that the avenue is just wide open for amazing things from clothing to furniture. Right before we had Anais, I immediately started building a set of chairs that are exactly like the normal chairs that I build, except kids’ scale. And that was hilarious and amazing because there was something about just shifting scale that made everything cute and helped me prepare for fatherhood. Working on something that was exactly the same but just slightly smaller in every dimension – I think it kind of emotionally helped me understand what was about to happen to my life.
“Right before we had Anais, I immediately started building a set of chairs that are exactly like the normal chairs that I build, except kids’ scale. And that was hilarious and amazing because there was something about just shifting scale that made everything cute and helped me prepare for fatherhood... I think it kind of emotionally helped me understand what was about to happen to my life”
KB: Talk to me a little bit about legacy. What do you want your legacy to be for other creatives and what is the legacy you want to leave for Anais?
AI: I don't know.(laughs) It's a really tough one. I'm too young to know.
KB: I think often we don't think in those terms. It’s probably something that people think about in hindsight.
AI: I'm going to really have to wrap my head around that for a little while but honestly I don't know. You know, there are so many designers and furniture makers and I put those in two separate categories. Those that made a couple really beautiful objects. That was their mark – leaving a couple things that were museum worthy – and that, to me, was the culmination of their entire life. A couple objects of perfection. That is almost enough of a goal. But there are also designers who have changed the entire landscape of design. You learn about the Eameses and they were designing a lot of mass produced furniture. To some degree I really respect that, although I think a lot of those pieces also have their shortcomings. A lot of those pieces do fall apart eventually, even though people want them. I know a ton of people who have their grandparents’ Eames chair now but, unfortunately, the way that they were built means they need to be rebuilt. That, to me, is unfortunately a lost opportunity. If this chair is going to last 70 or 80 years it should last 150. And if the design and the desire for that design lasts that long, why are they not built in such a way that they could actually maintain their stability and integrity? That wasn't your question at all though, was it?
KB: That's a really great answer. Legacy can be about concepts and ideas but it’s also about the longevity of your work. How it holds up for future generations. I think it's something a lot of people don't think about in our cycle of boomerangs and 15 second video. But I think those things go in cycles. Fast fashion and fast cycles of media are often followed by more thoughtful or longer lasting concepts and ideas.
What do you what do you want to leave behind for your daughter Anais?
AI: Hopefully a lot of really beautiful furniture (laughs). My wife and my primary ambition, both with having a child and also moving to an area where we can be more integrated into the work we're doing, is passing on the craft skills and knowledge that we're acquiring right now. We can pass it on to her at a much earlier age than either of us learned it. I'm not going to say that craft is dying, but a lot of the processes and techniques don't get passed on from generations the way that they used to. So the ability to continue doing that is important to us, and hopefully she'll care enough to want to continue some of those practices. But even just the knowledge of how things are made certainly opened up my world. Now when I walk through stores, I have a totally different mentality when I'm looking at mass produced objects like clothing or other types of furniture. Knowing what it takes to get from A to Z to actually have that finished piece is really inspiring. Honestly, I've been fascinated with cardboard boxes recently. Just knowing the production of corrugated core cardboard all the way to a fine finished box is fascinating to me. Seeing one that's really beautifully made, like the Apple boxes when you get like a new iPhone – everybody loves those! – and it is astounding how much actual work goes into the design of them. It took a really long time within my own education as a designer to become knowledgeable enough to be inspired by those tiny things. I think that's something that I really love about being a designer and that I hope to pass on as well. Inspiration in the everyday.
“My wife and my primary ambition, both with having a child and also moving to an area where we can be more integrated into the work we’re doing, is passing on the craft skills and knowledge that we’re acquiring right now. We can pass it on to her at a much earlier age than either of us learned it. I’m not going to say that craft is dying but a lot of the processes and techniques don’t get passed on from generations the way that they used to. So the ability to continue doing that is important to us, and hopefully she’ll care enough to want to continue some of those practices.”