Kate Greenberg’s furniture subtly reimagines domestic objects.
In her studio in Alameda, California, Kate Greenberg designs and builds furniture and lighting out of glass, metal, and textiles. Her subtle, understated work prompts contemplation about the objects that fill our homes. “Encoded motifs from my surroundings amass to reflect back a foggy view of the built and natural world,” she says about her work. One lamp, Radiator, imitates the domestic apparatus it shares a name with without actually emitting heat. Earlier this year, she co-curated Works in Progress, which showcased furniture from 12 Bay Area design studios, at the American Industrial Center in San Francisco. She’s currently working on designing a daybed. Paola Singer wrote about Greenberg’s aluminum, stainless steel, and latex Milk Bench—and four other beautiful benches—in “A Good Place to Sit” in the Summer 2024 issue of American Craft.

kategreenberg.studio | @kate.hands.co

How do you describe your work or practice in 50 words or less?
I design and craft furniture, objects, and lighting, with a material focus on aluminum, glass, steel, and textile. The concepts bloom from observation and meditation. Elements of both city architecture and the natural world eventually seep in, offering a new visual arena for humans to relate to our objects and spaces.

Tell us about a handcrafted environment you’ve been to that has inspired you.
Once I accidentally stumbled into an underground grotto. I crawled under a bush in a stranger’s garden (long story) and ended up there. It was hard to tell when it was built, but it was clear that the person who built it wanted to. Being in someone’s underground cave is a particularly weird feeling, but I was forever inspired that they carved away a quiet place in this world.

What are your favorite tools for furniture making, and why?
A horizontal mill or welder. With those tools, once you’re in the zone, you develop some rhythm for working and the hours start to fall away. They also generally don’t cause as much pain as some other tools!

You’ve soundtracked your installations in the past, and you cite music as a big driving force behind your work. Tell us about your dream musical collaboration.
I would love to get a group of musicians and producers together to soundtrack a certain lived experience, and then design for that experience as they compose. Reframing things we take for granted is one vital driver of art; by calling on different sensory perspectives, we can have a new understanding of the everyday.

What is the craft community like in the Bay Area? How do you trumpet the tangible and handcrafted in a city ruled by the digital?
While the craftspeople here each have their own distinct expertise, the community as a whole feels very rooted in the Northern Californian way of thinking. This comes out in the materials, processes, or concepts people gravitate toward. It’s definitely possible to ignore a tech-centric lifestyle, despite it being the overture in SF. It’s deep within the history in this city to rebel against it, all while also getting pushed around. Creating your own terms and opportunities becomes really key.

If you could have furniture from any artist for your own home, whose work would it be and why?
I would get a bench by Najla El Zein. Her work takes ceramic or stone—essentially dense historical layers of the Earth—and transforms them into a feeling so poignantly human. In this way, a simple form covers the gamut of life on our planet.