Makers

Craft That Holds

Three small companies handcraft storage crates, shelves, and credenzas to help music collectors organize all that vinyl.

By Daniel Waite Penny
September 29, 2023

Fall 2023

Features + Profiles

Free To Read

Photo courtesy of Symbol Audio

With handcrafted furniture, the process of looking through music can be as wonderful as listening to it. This detail shows the flip bins at the top of the Dovetail Vinyl Storage Cabinet from Symbol Audio.

During the most recent Record Store Day—an event held every April to celebrate independently owned record stores—more than 1.8 million records made their way into the hands of fans and collectors. It was the best week of sales in years. Following an ebb in the early 2000s, record sales in the US have increased dramatically. In 2022, the Recording Industry Association of America tallied the sales of 41.3 million EPs and LPs. It turns out that despite the pervasiveness of digital recordings—or perhaps because of it—some fans crave a physical connection to the music they love.

With this revival in record sales, a flourishing category of furniture has emerged for storage and display. And just like the indie acts and local bands that have become most associated with the return of analog music technology, this new wave of record storage is being led by independent artisans and craftspeople at small companies who understand that for vinyl enthusiasts, it’s always been about more than just the music.

These companies are reimagining the way we collect records by creating handcrafted pieces for vinyl storage and display that are designed to stand the test of time.

FORM & FINISH

Mystic, Connecticut
formandfinish.co | @formandfinishco

“Every time I see records in milk crates, I cringe a bit,” says Geoff Foote, cofounder of Form & Finish, a small record storage and cabinet manufacturer based in Connecticut. “Milk crates are ugly.” Still, he has to admit there were some benefits to this dorm-room method of storing record collections; crates are cheap, strong, stackable, and small enough that a single person can carry one when it’s full of all that vinyl and cardboard.

The aesthetic problem of record storage nagged at Foote for years, but he never had much time to devote to it until the pandemic hit in 2020. Foote was a record collector himself who grew up in the heavy metal and hardcore scene in the Boston area before starting Orion Manufacturing, a custom architectural millwork company in Mystic. When the pandemic slowed the construction trade, he found himself with time to design storage pieces he could be proud to have in his living room—not to mention a surfeit of Russian birch plywood and some idle CNC milling machines.

Thus the Form & Finish Chelle vinyl crate was born. Foote uses his Orion union shop to handle the construction: ripping, spray-finishing, and then vacuum-pressing veneer onto large sheets of plywood. From there the pieces are crosscut to length, pre-drilled, and finished with organic boiled linseed oil for a nice amber color. Made of 5/8-inch-thick plywood, the crate is stackable, durable, and modular—everything Foote had been searching for to store his records. Most important, it is accessible; the products are all flat packed, delivered with American-made fasteners, and assembled at home by customers with just a screwdriver. While some collectors might balk at having to put together their crates and shelves themselves, Foote knew there would be others who were attracted to the analog nature of the process.

“If you can calibrate a tonearm,” he says, referring to the highly sensitive part of the record player that holds the needle above the vinyl, “you’re already comfortable with a lot of the thinking involved.”

Photo courtesy of Form & Finish

The Chelle Vinyl Cube by Form & Finish, shown here in walnut, comes with a removable storage crate that glides thanks to soft close undermount drawer slides. The cube features integral grommeted cord management and is customizable, 24 x 19 x 20.5 in.

Photo courtesy of Geology

The Open 45 Credenza from Geology in oiled walnut, 21 x 60 x 21 in., features a slotted interior that allows for movable divider panels. The shelves can be moved, too, and a cord channel runs the length of the unit for hidden cable management.

GEOLOGY

Los Angeles
geologystudio.com | @geology_studio

Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, Adam Friedman, founder of design studio Geology, has been experimenting with custom vinyl displays that are as opulent as they are innovative. For Friedman, the design of his deluxe record storage systems came from his dissatisfaction with how little he was actually using his record player to listen to music.

Why not make something that promotes the use of it, makes it easy, makes it appealing? he asked himself. This question led him to design and build a credenza made from the finest FSC-certified walnut and more than 70 individually handcrafted components. The result is a piece of furniture that displays records on a 45-degree bias in a unique visual enticement that makes your favorite albums into works of art. To heighten the aesthetics, Friedman kept everything else out of sight with an interior cord management system for power cords and speaker cables that passes below the records and runs the length of the cabinet.

But some record enthusiasts need more storage than Friedman’s Open 45 can accommodate—sometimes requiring space for up to 30 linear feet of vinyl. To handle the physics of bigger collections, Friedman came up with a wood-and-steel structure made in his LA workshop called the Wall of Sound (after Phil Spector’s lush production style). Resembling a laboratory shelving system, the wood construction comprises more than 100 individually fabricated pieces, and the metal frame requires over 50 individual welds with 40 threaded attachment points for the woodwork. To keep all these records from crushing an overzealous collector, the Wall of Sound anchors to the wall behind it with attachments utilizing custom-milled magnetic cover plates.

Such complex, custom installations come at a steep cost (upwards of $20,000), but for the audiophile who might spend $6,000 on a record player needle, it’s a small price to pay to have an heirloom-quality piece of furniture to hold their prized collection. “You want it to be solid for decades,” Friedman says. “How is it going to last generationally?”

Photo courtesy of Symbol Audio

The 52-inch Unison model from Symbol Audio in natural ash, 34 x 52 x 18 in., holds stereo equipment behind a swinging door and up to 420 LPs. It features a vibration-isolated turntable platform and flip bin–style record storage.

SYMBOL AUDIO

Nyack, New York
symbolaudio.com | @symbolaudio

Like Foote and Friedman, the father-and-son design team of Blake and Walker Tovin found themselves on a similar journey back to vinyl, but they were frustrated by the lack of contemporary, high-end pieces to store and display their growing collections. Having long operated a furniture studio based in New York City and Nyack that sold designs to the likes of West Elm and Restoration Hardware, the Tovins decided they wanted to create something they could control from start to finish. So they launched a new firm, Symbol Audio, dedicated to their longtime hobby.

Because of their commitment to making in the US with American wood, Symbol chose to partner with a small factory in West Virginia that is known among industry insiders for turning out very high quality wood furniture (the Tovins prefer that the factory go unnamed here). But it wasn’t just about aesthetics and storytelling: 90 percent of the American hardwoods used in Symbol’s furniture are sourced within 70 miles of their production facility.

Symbol Audio tries to appeal to design lovers as much as to audio geeks. At their entry level is the 24-inch Unison model—an all-in-one record playing and storage solution—but things can scale up to the massive flagship Modern Record Console. This statement piece is constructed of 14-foot American black walnut boards and sits on a base made of precision cut, TIG welded, quarter-inch stainless steel plates. It’s finished with a hand-applied patinated coating. All of this work is done by a single craftsperson, totaling 100 hours of labor. Beneath the ocean of wood grain, record lovers will find 6.5-inch, full-range speaker drivers and a 300-watt subwoofer powered by a tube amplifier for an unparalleled warm sound.

Though the Tovins have different tastes in music—Coltrane’s A Love Supreme is a favorite of Blake’s while Walker is more into Jay-Z’s Reasonable Doubt—an obsessive love of music is woven into the fabric of the company. “We’ve got a Slack channel for sharing music, and we listen to music eight hours a day in the office,” says Walker Tovin, Symbol’s brand director. “It really is a business that’s authentic to the passion that we all have.”

Daniel Waite Penny is a journalist who writes about culture and climate. His work has appeared in the New York Times, the New Yorker, GQ, and elsewhere. He is the host of the new podcast Non-toxic.

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