Surreal Stacked Furniture Looks Like It’s About to Crash
Like something straight out of a surrealist painting, story or film, these creative stacked furniture collections are the work of craft artist Vincent Thomas Leman. His creations combine the functional needs of everyday use and uncanny, unusual and unique forms.
There is an element of the traditional and antique in his finished products, but deformed in the way our memories are skewed or our vision is distorted in dreams. Despite their twists and turns, each drawer can be pulled and each cabinet opened.
Through a sequence of formal-and-artistic operations, each furniture piece has clear origins in something conventional that is then stretched, curved, stacked and stepped through a controlled-but-creative iterative process with ever-changing results.
“All of the furniture produced by Dust begins with sketches… many sketches. The work starts with a concept, the spark of imagination that defines each piece. This concept is something that must be worked towards with perseverance. Sometimes the concept is a particular movement or curve, sometimes an idea like Acrobats balanced on top of each other. The concept is refined and reworked, sometimes surfacing in Vincent’s sketchbook several times over the course of months or years.”
About Designer Vincent Leman
“Vincent Leman can hardly remember a time when he wasn’t building furniture. He grew up working in the shop building fine quality custom cabinetry and woodwork for the family business. After completing his degree in mechanical engineering at Purdue University, Vincent made the decision to return to furniture building after realizing a strong aversion to cubicles and deskwork. He spent the next several years developing a very distinct, quirky style which could be described as a revolt against straight lines and the expected.”
“During this time he built one-of-a-kind art pieces ranging from cabinets, bookcases, mirrors, to beds and anything that entered his mind to build. Maintaining that art can be both beautiful and functional, Vincent combined his knowledge as a fine woodworker and his engineering skills to create gravity bending furniture with personality, while leaving function fully intact.”
