The Robb Report magazine and website covers all manner of luxury lifestyle such as sneak peeks into the top hotels in Las Vegas, Dubai and Paris, review of British shoemaker Barker Black, musings on “Car of the Year 2011” winner Ferrari 458 Italia, news from the 2011 Yacht & Brokerage Show in Miami, as well as a curation of interior and home design for the most discerning tastes.
We’re pleased as punch to be included in their “New & Noteworthy” segment, featuring our sleek and sustainable furnishings. SHAZAM, JOHNHOUSHMAND’s latest collection which blends together sophisticated style and extreme feats of micro-engineering, is highlighted, as well as one of our “must-have” pieces, No. 0028 Beaver Table. This piece is both functional and visually stimulating, constructed from gnawed branches and a ¾” piece of blue Starfire glass. As the snows melt and nature readies itself for spring, this piece brings to mind renewal and rebuilding.
Be sure to visit the Robb Report for their take on JOHNHOUSHMAND.
Working in the north country can be a challenge in the depth of winter…. Last week’s snowstorm made for some interesting scenes….
(Needless to say, we all missed a day of work!)
After hoisting the components of this mammoth table up to a NYC Park Ave apartment on the roof of the elevator, the piece was assembled in situ. Engineered to come apart and back together perfectly, pitons and all, the finished piece is astounding for its design, elegance, craftsmanship, and engineering….
Not content to receive nature’s blessings, we have decided to push the envelope…. Originally conceived as part of our “Retaliation Collection” (more about that later…), we have taken a selection of extraordinary slabs of wood, and made molds from them, casting them into aluminum slabs. With all the cool beauty of white metals, and the intense living information of the highly character starting slabs, these pieces merit extreme attention. They can also be shaped and folded into standing pieces, book-matched, mixed and matched, and more.
The landscape of our lives is inspirational, always. Here we have graphed it into the classic topographical map and tucked it nicely under glass…sexy legs….good color… the works. Talk about mixed metaphors!
We can of course take your backyard, your family estate, even your bedsheets and topo them. This should be fun. And serious. And beautiful. Your move….
Sometimes the cycle of life is writ so large it makes your eyes pop… High in the Pacific Northwest a mammoth tree went into decline. Having lived at the confluence of two rivers, it grew to astounding proportions. The takedown history, and the resulting slabs, are also of astounding proportions. Each slab measuring 8′ WIDE by 10′ long, a book-matched pair will give you a 20′ long table fit for a palace, a government center, or a conference room without equal on the planet.
Caught between the desire to show the fractal elegance of character grade wood and the curse of its forcible nature, we created the micro slab. All the beauty with one-tenth the weight. What better to do than gift-wrap a perfect low iron glass box with it. We have created a new line, a new process, and a new look on an old juxtaposition: soft on hard, dark on light, warm on cold. Enjoy!
(There are so many ways to marry these… Come co create with us.)
“In addition to our NYC showroom (The Portal to Imagination!), we
have just opened our west coast showroom at the Pacific Design Center
in Los Angeles. Also featuring the Hous Projects gallery, this 3000SF
space is visual caviar, with exceptional pieces of JOHNHOUSHMAND
functional art combined with the work emerging international artists.
The collection gives the viewer a dynamic experience of these pieces
in a setting which reads both display and livable. Please come by,
share our vision, and maybe even a glass of wine. Currently in space
B528, and moving to B222 on February ….
The CLEARLY FUNCTIONAL line came to be from the wish to marry the airy glassine quality of acrylic with the substantial and vital quality of wood. The design world is full of plastic and acrylic products which for the most part we find alienating, ugly, and harsh. It was considered that if we could transform that problem with a natural element, we might get a magnificent synergy and an iconic design as well. As we developed methods of attaching the two materials invisibly and minimally, and as we also experimented with casting a “plastic” into a natural material (live-edge wood), we unleashed a fiesta of exciting designs that hit the mark…extraordinary visual appeal, industrial design pedigree, and a real wood component that takes us into the world of fine furniture. Win, win, win, win, win…fun, fun, fun, fun…cool, cool, cool, cool.
The OneTree Project was born out of an extraordinary sequence of events…a meeting between Eric Poncon and John Houshmand in New York where they found their paths in a curious parallel (and a promise to “do something exciting together someday…”), the devastation of 3 million acres of forest lands in northeast Nicaragua’s indigenous frontier region (RAAN), Poncon’s appreciation for the work at JOHNHOUSHMAND, and our mutual love for great design, natural materials, and a philosophically sound interface with reality. And we do mean reality. Nothing unreal about sending a lawyer into the Nicaraguan frontier to search titles for 24,000 acres of small property holdings, negotiating fair purchase of these lands, obtaining IFC assistance, setting up extraction teams and a 12,000 board feet per day sawmill facility, reforestation programs and much, much, more…
Poncon, with architect and designer Matthew Falkiner (Morgan’s Rock eco-hotel, Simplamente Madera furniture company, and more…) invited Houshmand down to the frontier to see firsthand the devastation and the operations, and plan a series of joint ventures which will include projects such as: The “Handshake Collection” of extraordinary pieces designed and fabricated in our New York facilities using amazing wood elements from the immense salvage operation; the “Deep Roots Collection,” designed by Houshmand and Falkiner and made in Nicaragua comprising high design values, affordability, and increasing the training and viability of the local milling and artisan woodworkers; the “OneTree Collection,” a project to put pieces of two giant trees in the hands of 10 Nicaraguan and American artists respectively, and the works to travel as bonding collections. Another germinating concept is another eco-hotel with cabanas designed by guest architects/designers, each getting one tree for their creation. Other projects include value added use of the wood such as wall treatments, prefab housing, gluelam beams, countertops, even balsa surfboards… All FSC certified, all returning profits to reforestation, social, and educational projects, some of which are already falling into place. More to come! There is much more to come as well as an audio slideshow of my most recent trip to the jungles of Nicaragua.
The OneTree Project was born out of an extraordinary sequence of events…a meeting between