The Marina Line

The MARINA LINE is a collection of furniture intended to provide work of heirloom quality, made from sustainable materials, at a much lower price-point than comparable one-of-a-kind pieces.

The catalyst for The Marina Line was a request from a friend in Japan. Mr. Shosai Yamaguchi asked me to design a line of furniture that he and his consortium of small manufacturers would build and market in Japan. His colleagues have shops that specialize in certain kinds of woodworking. For instance, one makes products for use in the bath, one is an upholsterer, and another fabricates "kumiko" or latticework typically used in screens and lamps.
I’ve had a longstanding interest in providing furniture that is more accessible to more people. I want to provide something of quality that would be affordable for my family and friends. The process of designing and developing furniture forms for production is very different from my usual approach to the making one-of-kind pieces but obviously shares some overlap. In both cases, the work is by nature labor intensive but it is a joy to be engrossed in that process. With the production design challenge, I ask myself, “How can I make the best piece possible – within this context?” I ask myself further how I can simplify construction, allow the voice of material to be heard, and have proportion and structure work together to establish an identity? And how can I make that identity attractive and accessible to a broader range of people?


The Marina Line is also driven by the understanding that we have to do better by our planet, and I have tried to use recycled, sustainable materials whenever possible. I dedicate this collection to my daughter, Marina.