The Line Between Sculpture and Furniture (And a Lamp I’m Obsessed With)
On the IKEA PS lamp, a Finn Juhl fish, RISD’s emerging designers, and ten rules of thumb from Wendell Castle.
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The Line Between Sculpture and Furniture (And a Lamp I’m Obsessed With)On the IKEA PS lamp, a Finn Juhl fish, RISD’s emerging designers, and ten rules of thumb from Wendell Castle.
Hi friends!
Happy summer, everyone. With Memorial Day behind us, school winding down, and the days getting luxuriously long here in the PNW — I love the long evenings, considerably less enthusiastic about the 5:30am blazing sun — I am feeling the familiar shift of season and routine. This always makes me want to organize, refresh, and reinvent. I’ve been plotting my son’s bedroom makeover and dreaming about the garden, while also feeling a powerful urge to purge approximately everything. Too many projects, not sure where I’ll land first. In the meantime, the neighborhood has been doing its summer thing — block parties, kids spilling out onto sidewalks, that particular quality of long-evening light that makes everyone want to stay outside just a little longer. There is something about this season that turns neighbors into friends and streets into living rooms. I have been soaking it up. It feels like a small act of manifesting the world we want. While my mind spins on projects and plans, I thought we’d take a little respite this week and bounce around the things that have been stopping me mid-scroll, mid-walk, and mid-daydream. Let’s get into it.
PS: I Love You
I was at IKEA, in line before opening on launch day for the chance to see the new PS collection in person — and to snag a few things for myself. I love the energy around moments like this. You get a little microcosm of people with similar interests, all buzzing about the same thing. My friend and I quickly scoped out who was there for the PS and who was just after a morning cinnamon bun and a Kallax. We made a beeline for the launch area, secured our pieces before they disappeared, and then gave ourselves time to properly browse. So what did we get? We both took home the new floor lamp, and it really exceeded my expectations. It is a study in simplicity — I initially had bad torchière flashbacks, conjuring dorm rooms and banned halogen bulbs, but this is not that. The proportions are slim and elegant. I brought it home not knowing exactly where to put it and discovered it could tuck into so many corners as a sculptural accent. I landed on a corner in my dining room. I’m keeping it upright, but the adjustability is genuinely impressive — it adds so much function and personality for the price. The color was a difficult choice — all three are so good. I ended up with the burgundy, but I love how fresh the citrusy green is, and I am always a sucker for cobalt. I did notice that the burgundy is a near-perfect match to Schoolhouse’s Raisin color, which I developed with my team a couple of years ago. IKEA, I see you. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery — I’ll take the compliment.
I also grabbed this chair for my son’s future desk. Quirky and cool in exactly the right way. The one thing I didn’t manage to get was the ratchet stool — sold out before I could get my hands on one. I am now stalking the IKEA website for the next shipment. I have a small collection of IKEA stools from various collaborations and past PS editions. I find stools endlessly useful and I can never resist one with personality. Update: I got the alert as I was sitting down to edit this newsletter that the stool was back in stock, and I immediately dropped what I was doing to zip over to IKEA. Success, friends!
What RISD Is Up To
All the coverage of the IKEA PS collection gave way this week to ICFF, and I’ve been following along with equal amounts of FOMO and admiration. I don’t have a full roundup this year, but I couldn’t let the week pass without a shoutout to my alma mater, the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), and their exhibition Intrinsic Values. As part of the Wanted exhibit for new designers, The Furniture Design department presented work from fifteen BFA and MFA students examining furniture as utility, as art, and as a medium for questioning domestic conventions and environmental responsibility. The work balances traditional craftsmanship with experimental approaches — hand and machine, structure and expression, function and narrative. It is, in the best possible way, exactly what RISD has always been about. Two pieces in particular stopped me:
Russ Fogle, MFA 2027 — Screenshot 2017-01-02 at 01.35.00 PM—This piece uses the iconic Shaker ladder-back chair as its canvas. Its title — “Screenshot 2017-01-02 at 01.35.00 PM” — is the exact timestamp of the death of Shaker elder Sister Frances Carr, leaving only two living Shakers. The choice to name a handcrafted object after a digital notification is its own quiet commentary — the kind of conceptual layering that makes you stop and look twice.Fogle’s work examines tools and their societal effects — here the traditional ladder-back is ornamented with wireframe linework executed in black-dyed maple veneer, using a combination of traditional string inlay and modern lamination techniques. I have long admired the Shakers, so I love seeing their legacy inspire a new generation of makers. The inlaid black maple creates a wireframe that speaks to the craft and mathematics of these masterful chairs. A beautiful study in construction, material, and history.
Mary Alford, MFA 2026 — Filet Lamp —This lamp is another beautiful experimentation with materiality. The delicate crocheted textile is turned into a three-dimensional glowing lamp with an unexpected structure, deceiving our perceptions of a flat, fragile material. I love the movement of the form and the way light glows through the patterned surface in endlessly changing ways.
ICFF has a special place in my history with RISD. During my time there, our class was invited to take part in a Design Week show hosted by Martha Stewart at the Chelsea Martha Stewart Living headquarters — one of the great privileges of being a student at a school that takes your work seriously enough to put it in front of the world. I was interviewed by Martha herself, which was equal parts terrifying and thrilling. I remember feeling nervous but confident, sporting my space buns and flared jeans. The well-funded, large booths of the bigger brands are always impressive at these fairs — but the innovation, then and now, lives in the student work. It always has. Something Fishy
This little fish caught my attention on Instagram and I was delighted to discover it is a rare piece made by mid-century Danish architect Finn Juhl. Juhl is best known for furniture that sits at the marriage of sculpture and function — and this small treasure is a perfect expression of that sensibility. I love when an object immediately incites an emotion — especially when that emotion is pure joy — and then reveals itself to also have a function. It fills me with delight every time. The fish was on view at The European Fine Art Foundation (TEFAF) New York Art Fair, which takes place every May — a discovery for me this year. Have any of you been? This one-of-a-kind puffer fish piggy bank, made in 1941, was handcrafted by celebrated Danish woodturner Kai Boysen, with whom Juhl frequently collaborated. The playful form reflects the sculptural sensibility that defines Juhl’s most iconic work. I love the simplicity of the forms and use of materials. The beautiful warm, textured turned teak is punctuated with graphic use of bronze — the undulating wire crest, perforated tail, welcoming wire and sheet metal fins, money-hungry mouth, and the round keyholes that double as eyes. If you’re looking for some whimsical but functional objects to make your everyday life a little more fun, here are a few to brighten your day.
The Dog That Stays on the Porch Will Find No Bones
I was recently reminded of the work of Wendell Castle by a designer who had the privilege of working under him — and it sent me back into his world with fresh eyes. Castle stands as one of the defining voices of the American studio furniture movement — not its originator, but perhaps one of its most daring practitioners. Born in Kansas in 1932, he received a BFA in Industrial Design and an MFA in sculpture from the University of Kansas before moving to Rochester, New York, where he taught at the School of American Craftsmen and eventually headed the woodworking department at Rochester Institute of Technology in the 1960s. A brief word on studio furniture — a term that deserves unpacking. It describes an era of American furniture design united not by a single aesthetic but by the background of its makers: their interest in linking concept, material, and technique, and the small studios in which they worked. Taught through academic programs rather than traditional apprenticeships, it prized intellectual rigor alongside technical mastery. Castle was one of its defining figures. It is this movement, this way of thinking about making, that shaped how I learned to design — to hold concept, aesthetics, and craft together as a single inseparable thing His work begs the question: is it sculpture or furniture? Is it art or design? In the mid-1960s he developed a stacked lamination technique — pieces of wood stacked, glued together, and shaped into large organic forms. Wharton Esherick, before him, was working in this manner, as were many sculptors, but Castle took the technique further. Esherick used it primarily as a supplementary carving method, working organically. Castle industrialized the process, creating rough-blocked forms to execute complex, biomorphic art furniture. The initial spark, remarkably, was a how-to guide for making duck decoys that he read as a teenager in a woodworking magazine. (I am filing away a future newsletter on the history and craft of decoys. But I digress.) When he moved to Rochester and gained access to better equipment, the technique flourished into a distinctive style of volumetric, whimsical forms that defied traditional furniture categories entirely. What makes the stacked lamination so remarkable is not just the forms it produced but the efficiency of the process. Rather than gluing up a large solid cube and carving away, Castle planned each cross-section in advance — cutting the silhouette at each layer, hollowing the interior to reduce weight, and gluing up these graduated shapes like a staircase of forms. Less waste, more precision, limitless possibility.
His Library Sculpture of 1965 is a breathtaking example. Towering in height, it consists of two cantilevered chairs and a desk growing from a central twisting column of layered walnut. The crisp edge of the twisted trunk and the audacity of the cantilever add a lightness to what is, structurally, a monumental achievement. Masterful engineering and beauty in perfect tension. Interestingly, Castle was criticized by elders in the field — Wharton Esherick, Sam Maloof, and George Nakashima — for using too much wood. But he related to wood differently. He didn’t need the perfectly grained lumber his colleagues prized; he could use the offcuts, the so-called “bad” pieces. He valued the final form over the perfect grain, celebrating wood as a building material rather than a surface to be admired. In doing so he freed himself from the constraints of lines and planes entirely.
Throughout the 1960s he broadened his material palette to include fiberglass, styrofoam, neon, and plastic, still pursuing his volumetric organic forms. His Molar series of fiberglass furniture leans heavily toward sculpture — a Pop Art expression that illustrates Castle’s ability to continually evolve his work.
In the late 1970s he made a significant pivot toward more refined, historically referenced furniture with trompe l’oeil still lifes of everyday objects carved in wood — most notably Coat On A Chair. In the 1980s, using costly materials and masterful workmanship, he raised the ceiling on what studio furniture could be. Later in life he returned to nearly nonfunctional sculptural forms. A full arc, fully committed at every stage. When I was at RISD I experimented with Castle’s stacked lamination technique myself. I made a series of stools called Sea Stones , inspired by years of visits to Cape Cod with family and friends — meant to be relics of gathering in that coastal place, weathering with time and connection. I also made a series of ring boxes that mimic the shape of a human heart; pulled apart, they reveal a tiny drawer just big enough for wedding rings or small mementos of a relationship. Wendell’s work was firmly in my mind when I was making both.
While researching this piece I came across Castle’s ten rules of thumb, published in 1996. They stopped me — not as artistic advice alone but as a guide to living and problem-solving that extends far beyond any single discipline:
Right now I am particularly drawn to the last two — a reminder to be easy on yourself and a push to keep reaching further. What Castle understood, and what his whole career demonstrates, is that the most interesting work happens at the edges: between art and design, between function and sculpture, between the known and the not-yet-imagined. The line between sculpture and furniture is not a line at all. It is an invitation.
Pink Again
I have been wearing these pants on repeat. The cut is easy and effortless, but the color is what really makes me smile — it is remarkable how many things pink works with in a wardrobe. Maybe not so surprising, if you know me at all. Which of Castle’s ten rules resonates most with you right now? Katie xx Thanks for reading Design School! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
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