Brooklyn Heights
Dumbo Fair Showcases The Burough's Design Talent
By CHRIS SCHMIDT
"I think people either love contemporary design or don't," said Jack Feldman of the 3 Square design group, speaking from his booth at Brooklyn Designs, a three-day design fair held last weekend in Dumbo. "They'll follow it anywhere."
Indeed, although the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce, which organized the event, had arranged for a special shuttle from the Borough Hall station in Brooklyn Heights to the fair, they probably needn't have bothered: Hordes of design aficionados arrived on their own steam.
The design fair took place at St. Ann's Warehouse, a loft-like alternative theater space, and featured 30 exhibitors with one thing in common -- all were designers who sold, produced, or created their wares in the borough of Kings.
Some of the designs on display, such as 3 Square's sleek, 1960s-inspired furniture, were not unlike much of the contemporary furniture you'd find in Manhattan. But a freshness and collegiality unique to Brooklyn pervaded the entire fair.
And some exhibitors, in keeping with their Brooklyn provenance, presented decidedly quirkier wares. One of the more attention-grabbing items in the show was a toilet by Oliver Beckert of the Bushwick-based Elseware design collective; the toilet's transparent tank was a functioning aquarium with fish inside. Mr Beckert has sold three of the toilets so far. One man in attendance at the fair promised his wife that the toilet would be the first item they bought when they owned their own apartment.
Elseware's other designs included the "Mazillaneous" bookshelf and the "ILean," a sort of Medieval-looking contraption that's the opposite of a stool -- it has a back, but no seat. "It's about an impartial engagement with function," explained its designer, Daniel Harper. The ethos behind the group's witty if impractical creations? "We're not trying to sell anything," Mr. Harper said, clutching a beer as he spoke.
On the other side of the room, Matt Gagnon, a rangy late-20-something with Williamsburg styling exhibited a pair of intriguing lamps whose fluid, wooden, Jenga-like forms reflected Mr. Gagnon's recent apprenticeship with architect Frank Gehry. But don't try to peg Mr. Gagnon as having made a career switch. He insists he's neither a devoted furniture-maker nor an architect on a break. The lamps are a kind of functional architectural model, "testing an idea in furniture first," Mr. Gagnon said.
"People always want to identify you as something," Mr. Gagnon said. "Frank Gehry had to stop making his cardboard chairs because people started calling him a furniture designer." Mr. Gagnon's lamps are available at Bark in Brooklyn and at Move Lab in Manhattan.
The exhibitors at the fair skewed young, but even Mr. Gagnon wasn't the youngest of the group.That honor likely belonged to Steven Tomlinson, who had just graduated from Pratt Institute and was exhibiting a school project -- a flat-shipping stackable side table -- for which he hoped to find a distributor. Mr. Tomlinson's attitude was positively ingenuous: "I'm just looking to see what's out there -- what I can find out about the design world," he said.
Azy Schechter, a rug designer with a warm, Gertrude Stein appeal, cast on eye toward the Pratt booth opposite hers and joked, "This here is the geriatric wing -- where they stick the old people."