Studio Visit: BDDW

I discovered BDDW years ago after falling in love with their stunning live edge dining tables, and have since fallen one by one for their full range of thoughtfully detailed, beautifully made pieces. Needless to say, when I learned they were making ceramics, I was beyond excited. Perhaps my favorite: the coffee mugs. Made in small runs, each is individually handcrafted and drawn, and wonderfully unique. I was fortunate enough to receive several from Richard as a holiday gift, and they have become a special part of my morning routine.

A small American furniture company dedicated to the creation of timeless, well-made designs, BDDW is lead by founder Tyler Hays, who designs each piece before it is painstakingly crafted in his Philadelphia studio. He was kind enough to welcome us in and share a bit about his process and point of view. I hope you enjoy. XXJKE

R+T: How and when did you enter into the world of furniture design? What was it that drew you to this art form?

I’ve been making stuff since I was a child and haven’t stopped. My first true career was as a painter/sculptor…then a carpenter/builder, and furniture as a career kinda found me. I’ve always done it but in seemed like the loudest calling as I became a real adult.

R+T: As a painter, sculptor, builder and engineer, your skill set is a wonderfully diverse one… What impact does this have on the pieces you create?

I think it is entirely the subject of what I create. I obsess over the materials and how to make a piece come together, as well as how I am going to make it – what tools, processes, glues etc. Also, how will it look in 100 years and what part will fail first. The look of the piece is really not the most interesting part. It’s making tricky things come together that is my drug. How it looks is more like dessert.

R+T: What are some of your sources of inspiration?

My mother was my biggest influence. I grew up poor and rural, my mother made our home beautiful with garage sale antiques and objects. I like purpose-built things. I like old engineer designed pieces. I like the Shakers and I like a lot of modern stuff. I’m not a well-studied person in design. I went to school for painting, design for me happened out of building things.

R+T: Your heirloom quality furniture has long been a favorite, but we’ve recently fallen in love with your individually handcrafted and drawn ceramics… Can you share a bit about your materials and techniques?

I dig my own clay right outside my studio 20′ below the surface. It really starts with the material for me and then I just make the simplest things that I want to use personally. The drawings are inspired by the old salt glazed crocks my mother collected.

R+T: Tell us about the Frankford Clay Pit…

It was a serendipitous event. I was finally building my ceramics studio – a medium I was anxious to get back into. Clay was on my mind, and while digging a deep hole to install geothermal heating, I noticed what looked like clay. As a kid I had dug clay with my dads potter friend. I brought it inside and we fired it, and it wound up being a good quality stoneware. Super excited, I decided I would make my first ceramic pieces from this clay. We dug several yards and then closed the hole.

R+T: What does handmade mean to you?

I think it’s a very overused and kind of senseless term these days. I have a friend Aaron Scaturro who truly makes furniture by hand. A hatchet, a log he finds in the park, a spoke shave (YouTube it, it’s cool), and a scraper (not modern sandpaper) to make it smooth. No one does that. Even the craftiest purist woodworker is using a table saw and lumber milled with powered saws.

I have done everything from making my own chisels and hand cut dovetails with them to owning the baddest 5 axis CNC money can buy. I do lots of handmade work still, but I prefer to call it “really well made without compromise by happy people who are well fed with health insurance and guaranteed for life.”

I can make crappy furniture by hand. And I can make furniture that is engineered and built with robots beyond what’s possible by hand. That said, I buy and covet my friend Aaron’s truly handmade stuff. It’s a fascinating conversation I think about all the time, however I tune out when people get dogmatic.

Good design and extreme quality have always been the lofty objective, humans have always used the easiest most efficient way to get there. They would have used CNC machines in the 1800s if they had them.

R+T: How do you find that beautiful balance of form and function?

That’s a flattering question. I really just build stuff I see in head or desire to see made. I constantly draw by hand and build stuff as I think it should look. No formula. I often put form first and then the opposite. Some stuff is super practical. Some is just intended to be pretty.

R+T: If you had to, could you pick a favorite piece or collection?

Yes. But it’s stuff not out yet….my bathtub I’m making out of my homemade small bricks…I just finished my first watch and I love it. I love the porn coffee mugs. The tripod lamp I still like, the lake credenza. And the leather credenzas…and a couple new lamps I’m working on…no, I can’t pick just one.

R+T: What is the most rewarding part of your work?

I am the luckiest person in the world to make a living doing what I get to do. I have every process or machine to create anything I imagine. And dozens of crazy talented people working for me seeing all my goofy ideas to fruition. It’s like having dozens of hands. It was a grueling 20 years getting here, but now every part of my job is rewarding.

Photos: Sarah Elliott