![]() “A family skillet is a unifier,” he says. But mostly, the idea of legacy drives his work. His chemistry degree informs the pieces’ functionality (carbon steel allows more temperature control than cast iron), and he brainstormed aspects of their form by watching Colonial Williamsburg silversmiths and 1940s hot-rod builders. He designs the bakers-sold individually and in a trio-to distribute heat evenly, either in an oven or on a stove, and transition seamlessly to the table. There, he hand forges carbon-steel cookware-such as these elegant bakers-out of raw steel he procures from North and South Carolina, as well as from a mill down the street from his workshop. But after a chance encounter with a retiring New York blacksmith, who sold him the contents of his shop, Curtis settled in Roanoke in 2016 and opened Heart & Spade Forge. “I never really considered that it would be a job, though,” Curtis says. When most of his peers were working on their T-ball swings, Jed Curtis acquired his first anvil, inspired by a blacksmith demonstration he saw on a field trip to a living history museum. This was something we had to figure out.” Pulled tight and secured, the screen has a twinkle to it, as any treasure chest should at the ICFF, attendees couldn’t help but reach out and touch the metal as they walked by. ![]() Most of the time we’re working on something we’ve done before. “It was trial and error in getting that correct, but honestly, it was a lot of fun. “But wrapping the bronze around that curved end was an entirely new ball game,” he says. ![]() Almost all of our material comes from somewhere in Appalachia.”Īlthough most of the tables, shelves, lounge chairs, and credenzas Leed creates rely on hard angles, shaping the cabinet’s curved edges came relatively easily. “I spend a lot of time traveling around and picking up extra walnut whenever I see it. “We use a lot of walnut in our furniture,” Leed says, noting its resilience, malleability, rich hues, and intricate grain. “There’s no formula for any of this,” he says.Īfter settling on the Warren’s current shape and dimensions, he collected materials, obtaining rough-cut walnut from nearby Gibsonville before milling and shaping it in-house. One was tall one short one squat and square. In his workshop in downtown Durham, in a building that also accommodates his metal fabricator, an arts nonprofit, and a glassblowing studio he and a friend opened in 2017, Leed began by sketching out a handful of cabinet styles. ![]() is not entirely brand-new, but I think a lot of the small details of what our team implements in the work set it apart.” And despite the cabinet’s resemblance to time-tested forms, its refined elements-integrated joinery in figured walnut, a delicate woven (not welded) bronze screen, hand-cast bronze pulls to match-demanded innovation.īefore beginning his career in woodworking, Leed studied glassblowing and sculptural ceramics at Centre College in Kentucky, and he approaches each furniture project with an artist’s eye. “I wanted to make a recognizable object, but in a new way. “The folks who try to say that they are inventing something new-I don’t subscribe to that,” Leed says. In fact, Leed believes that he-and every other artist and artisan-is constantly being influenced by one thing or another, whether or not he realizes it. “That was the first time I heard a reference to that.” While he didn’t intentionally fashion the cabinet after the folksy eighteenth-century kitchen essential conceived to protect food from insects and animals in the days before refrigeration, he doesn’t mind the comparison. “Some of the older-generation folks I know said it looked like a pie safe,” Leed recalls. The premise has been around for centuries: Cabinets of curiosities have existed since the Italian Renaissance, when collecting rare and unusual souvenirs from the world over indicated social status, and viewing the assemblage doubled as party entertainment.īut for a segment of the audience who saw Leed’s sleek and modern finished design at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair (ICFF) in New York last spring, a classic American piece sprang to mind. “The driving narrative for this piece was the notion of having something tucked away that’s not completely hidden,” says Leed, a designer in Durham, North Carolina. An envy-inducing statement piece puts a contemporary spin on the classic curio cabinetīehind the luminous bronze screen and the handsome dark walnut casing of Elijah Leed’s Warren Cabinet, pottery, art books, trinkets, and turtle shells are meant to nestle next to model ships, marbles, and Matchbox cars.
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