Handcrafted Living

A Good Place to Sit

A well-designed bench offers us a moment of rest and reflection—and a beauty all its own.

By Paola Singer
July 18, 2024

Summer 2024

Goods

Free To Read

Photo by Matthias Pliessnig

Matthias Pliessnig wood art.

Is there any furniture simpler than a bench? It’s so simple, in fact, that it can seem to have been added as an afterthought. Yet most of us have spent plenty of time sitting on benches, and perhaps even have a treasured memory related to them.

One of the most enjoyable afternoons of my life took place on a bench in the garden of the Musée Rodin in Paris. It was a luminous day with a clear blue sky that made the master’s sculptures seem sharper, and as I looked around at the blooming roses and perfectly pruned boxwoods, life felt uncomplicated and filled with beauty—if only for a little while.

Although simplicity may be the whole point of benches—a structure so pared down it invites us to admire the world around us—they can also be the product of deep thought and meticulous craftsmanship. Here, we rounded up five designs that can stand up to the most inspiring surroundings.

Matthias Pliessnig

Sinuo

Even though Rhode Island–based artist Matthias Pliessnig draws inspiration from “myriad things,” including the shape of a woman’s body, his distinctly curvaceous benches can all be traced back to a sailboat. After completing the furniture design program at Rhode Island School of Design, he wanted more time to hone his craft and enrolled at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where one of his projects was to make a boat. “I learned how to steam bend wood, and it’s not really an accurate way to bend wood, but I realized you can build intuitively and still very accurately,” he says. After that, he began making seats that are structurally rigid yet utterly comfortable. Pliessnig starts with a computer-drawn design, then improvises while making each bench—such as this 2018 Sinuo (3.5 x 15 x 7 ft.), made of locally sourced white oak—so no two are alike.

matthias-studio.com | @matthiaspliessnig

Photo by Matthias Pliessnig

Yuko Nishikawa

Squish

Brooklyn-based ceramic artist Yuko Nishikawa created these snuggled-up clay stools to soothe the isolation she was experiencing during the pandemic. “It was a reaction to the restriction on touching other people,” she says. “I was thinking about being squished on the subway—I never liked that, but the pandemic made me miss it.” Nishikawa, who makes lamps, vases, tableware, and sculptures in offbeat shapes that seem to come from the depths of the sea or from another universe altogether, imbued this 2020 Squish bench (17 x 96 x 36 in.) with a sort of childlike innocence. To make the piece, she pushed together separate clay vessels during the leather-hard stage, when the material is firm but still malleable, and then fired them in her studio’s kiln. While each stool can stand on its own, their shapes and colors become truly meaningful when placed next to their companions.

yukonishikawa.com | @yuko_nishikawa

Photo by Ian Ace Photography

South Loop Loft, courtesy of Yuko Nishikawa.

Refractory Studio

Scimitar

Much like leather, this bronze bench is meant to get better with age. In fact, leather was part of the inspiration behind its design. Refractory founders Angie West and Alberto Vélez used a bison hide to make the mold that would translate into the piece’s uniquely textured surface. “It reflects the ruggedness and creatures of the [American] frontier, of folks who came before us and endured so much,” says West. “The textured areas wear like a saddle; the bronze will become more beautiful the more it is worn, so we want people to sit on it and not be precious.” Scimitar (16.5 x 66 x 17.75 in.) was fabricated across the hall at Refractory’s sister company, West Supply, a highly regarded Chicago foundry and glassworks atelier; it is a single continuous cast bronze form that starts out with a rigid base pattern—a CNC’d hard pattern cut from a 3D file—that is then sanded and manipulated.

refractory.studio | @refractory.studio

Photo by Jonathan Allen

Hun Chung Lee

Untitled

Korean artist Hun Chung Lee is known for his oversized ceramic pieces made with the ancient glazing techniques used in buncheong, a traditional form of Korean stoneware. Clay pieces are coated in white slip to maintain the brightness of the celadon glazes added on top. Once in the kiln, the alchemy of celadon can be unpredictable, resulting in varying shades of blue-green, but sometimes also blues and browns. “I follow my intuition,” says Lee. “I cannot control the glaze.” Yet given his long experience with the technique, there’s probably some foretelling involved. While making this 2022 untitled 19-by-21.5-by-36-inch work (“It can be a bench or sculpture,” he says, “I don’t think about the function too much. The user can decide.”), Lee was influenced by his surroundings in Los Angeles, where he has a studio and spends part of the year. “I use more color in California,” says the lifelong Seoul resident. “The sunshine is different.”

hunchunglee.com | @hunchunglee.la

Photo by Joe Kramm

Kate Greenberg

Milk Bench

This piece, made for a solo exhibition at the 2023 Alcova design show in Milan, Italy, reflects Kate Greenberg’s fascination with the past and imagined future of domestic objects (she marvels at the way humans have replicated the sun by creating lighting, for example). “I brought this idea of how we could live in the future to the basement of an old slaughterhouse in Milan,” she says. “The bench itself is a reflection bench, and it’s referencing milk stools because they are some of the earliest pieces of furniture, and my work explores the history of domestication.” Draped over the 18-by-60-by-20-inch bench is a blanket made of pure natural latex, whose outline can recall the slab of a milled tree or a large milk spill, purposely eliciting a parallel between the vital liquid inside both trees and mammals. Greenberg crafted this piece using aluminum and sheets of stainless steel at her studio in Alameda, California.

kategreenberg.studio | @kate.hands.co

Paola Singer, a freelance writer in New York City, is a frequent contributor to American Craft.

Photo by Federico Floriani

Kate Greenberg was featured in The Queue.

Read the interview

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A Good Place to Sit