Lady Ox Ponders: How can Furniture Learn from the Foodie?

Last night I couldn't sleep. Per usual?

Usual - usually means worrying about money, dreading my cog-in-the-BROKEN-machine day job, hating I am not creating art, wondering how my peers from grad school are making this all work, dirty dishes, new tires, death and taxes.

NO! This time is wasn't per usual brain-babble. I couldn't sleep, I couldn't sit still, because I was going to do it - quit my job and work full-time for the company that Clayton and I have been slaving for and dreaming of for the last 5 years of our lives.

When I can't sleep, I read my fancy-smart-phone...stocks, news, facebook, twitter. I read an article about the previous post - underground food markets. [See earlier post for article]

I read about an underground market in San Francisco, my heart away from Durham, where locavores get together and feast on the most innovative culinary arts there are presently. Local chefs and foodies skirt the red-tape of food laws by creating a private club, to which membership is free, to allow for innovation with out the parameters of BIG FOOD corporations. Vendors come with their chocolate-dipped prosciutto and snow made from frozen milk steeped with chilis. People growing produce on roof top gardens and cooking in their tiny city apartments. Allowing the people to have the control of what they eat and bringing passion back to consumption.

Can this happen with furniture? Clayton Oxford is doing it!

One thing that always happens when I meet a freshly graduated furniture design student or recently matriculated artist from the academy, the idealism is burning in their declarations about "the handmade" and "their process" and artistry and blah, blah, blah. Don't get me wrong. All of that is essential to being and artist. Identity. Vision. Work ethic. Commitment.

That isn't what bothers me. What they don't acknowledge in their pursuits is that their is a 200 year old industry born in High Point, NC of furniture. This is the dialogue that they are entering regardless if they are making furniture in their garage or in a factory in China. The moment you want to enter the market to sell your designs, whether you like it or not, you are part of it.

The Furniture Industrial Complex

There was the artisan. There was the assembly line. When a wood cabinet was made of wood that was crafted and pieced together. Then came the marketing. Then came the demand. Then came the need for quantity. With quantity came lack of quality. NUFF SAID. (I can elaborate more later)

SO what is Clayton Oxford doing that reflects the idea of the underground of food market? Getting materials - where ever he can locally - bamboo from the forest, barn wood from an abandoned residence in the country, metal scraps, etc. The difference is in the production.

In their 55,000 square foot warehouse in Durham, NC, Clayton Oxford's production creates quality furniture that can be made in relatively large quantities - this is the key. Clayton designs with the crucial premise that beauty and quality needs to be able to sell to a larger market in order to compete with the existing furniture industrial complex.