what is studio furniture?

Studio furniture is a highly specialised niche of the furniture market. While it is an extremely diverse field and therefore difficult to precisely define, there are some common elements:

• Studio furniture makers, as the name implies, mostly operate out of small shops with few or no employees.
• They normally utilise original designs of their own and often work on individually ordered pieces. Their furniture is also often retailed through galleries and high-end furniture boutiques.
• The individual style of the maker is often apparent.
• Production costs are high because of the high labour input of each piece. Shop space and large amounts of tools and machinery are also necessary.
  
  
• Both the technically challenging nature of the designs and the highly stylised details, mean much of the work produced by studio furniture makers is difficult to mass-produce. Some designer-makers argue, in fact, that if it can be mass-produced, it cannot be called studio furniture

Since studio furniture is frequently unique and highly crafted – often with a deliberate attempt to blur boundaries between fine and decorative arts and what could simply be termed craft – prices fetched by the more well-known studio furniture makers can run extremely high. Many museums, particularly in the United States, have examples of studio furniture as part of their permanent displays.

For more information on studio furniture, see the Furniture Society (http://www.furnituresociety.org/). Enrico has been a member of the Furniture Society since 2000.