High Point - Going to Market

In Stoel's Studio we have been working on furniture design for GroovyStuff. GroovyStuff designs furniture from recycled teak wood. A rustic furniture style, pieces of the wood range from tree trunks, branches, roots, to old farm equipment, yokes and wagon wheels.

Our class took a field trip to the High Point Furniture Market to see GroovyStuff's showcased products. This image is a very interesting chair design made from teak wood branches, a trunk and roots.

This was my first time to the High Point Furniture Market, and quite an experience it was - I have never seen so much furniture at one time!

We visited an Italian furniture designer, Natuzzi, who specializes in contemporary sofa sectionals. Natuzzi developed the "Natuzzi Edition" for the American market, with stereo speakers in the head cushions, part of the sectional reclining like the "lazy boy," and a control console with cup holders between the sections.

                   

Their furniture was beautiful and the designs were creative, but what was most interesting about Natuzzi was their showroom. The architecture of the building emulated a large dark ocean liner cutting through the main street. Once aboard the interior showrooms were arranged as ship decks, with roped bridges to the opposite side. This design intrigued Natuzzi, associating the architecture with the shipping of his vast line across the oceans to the American market

                        Natuzzi Showroom, High Point NC

As a new visitor to the Furniture Market, I wanted to see it all, but that was absolutely impossible in one day. The exhausting search through all the various vendors led me to one final stop, where I found the most interesting use of a piece of furniture in the most unlikely space, a piano on a waterfall. You might not have believed it if I didn't have the pictures to show.