by Lew Epstein, Coalesse General Manager
Through our ongoing Point of View series, we’ve been excited to share perspectives on the work we do at Coalesse and the products that embody our foundational themes. Over the past seasons, as we’ve introduced the first two themes of Customization and Craft, we’ve also reflected on how deeply these ideas inform each other and make each one better.
We set out with our CREATE stories to explore the meaning of craft as we see it in modern culture. We wanted to present the enduring traits that we find in the very best and most interesting things that can be crafted, in any age, and then show you how these traits run through our products. The subject has provoked rich dialogue about the often-misunderstood presence of tools and technology in craft, and how innovation has always expanded as well as refined the idea of what can be crafted. As we look forward, we know that the technology we harness, and the ways we merge the hand-made with the machine-made, only make more design and designing possible. Together they allow us to make things, better.
But we’ve seen, too, that craft itself makes us better as a company. It’s not just in those traits we pursue—the ingredients and the spark that get us going; the tools and the pioneers that show us how—it turns out that craft is frequently the partner of choice and personalization that we most need. Craft makes creativity something real and viable in many of the capabilities that we are developing for our customers. These are, in a sense, the tools that we’ve designed; the craft is in how you use them.
We’ve seen that the more we empower customization in the things we can make with you, the more those items become crafted and special. Our PARTICIPATE stories about the ways we can personalize design together have even more resonance in the context of craft.
This year we are launching custom capability programs in three of the most compelling categories of design that we can personalize—color, pattern and material. First, color is such a powerful and available form of expression. To give customers more choice, we’ve developed Coalesse Color, a capability that allows the selection and matching of virtually any color on select pieces of furniture.
At the same time, behind the scenes, we’ve formalized a framework that guides our own sensibility about color. Our Global Design Group set to work defining a Coalesse color palette, inspired by our California heritage and our appreciation of tones and combinations that come from the natural world. This palette appears through the projects we make and some of the surface material ranges we offer with our products, as a cohesive aesthetic whenever we apply color.
As the counterpoint to infinite choice, our crafted palette might inspire you to customize your projects with a starting point about color that we believe creates warmth and soul. In this direction, we are introducing a new knit palette for our SW_1 Seating Collection and the Lagunitas Lounge System, featuring 17 expanded colorways that were directly derived from our Coalesse color palette.
This aesthetic framework also links to a series of patterns we’ve designed, called Coalesse Pattern, that can be used to customize glass top tables and the LessThanFive Chair. First, we distilled motifs from nature into beautiful patterns that bring more of the outdoors inside. New printing technology can help us bring these patterns to our furniture to create a more unique and crafted product. Both our Coalesse color palette and Coalesse Pattern series have been building blocks of an upcoming Designtex + Coalesse co-designed collection of upholstery fabrics.
And, craft certainly also applies to the solid, natural hardwoods and stones that we are bringing into an expanded and more distinguished materials program — Coalesse Material Capabilities.
Craft means we seek beauty in our materials, and in the colors and patterns that reflect who we are. It means we are always curious about how to build new pathways to create our products, and to co-create them with you. Craft drives us to incorporate new technologies, to increase creativity so that each piece of furniture can become more and more, well, crafted. And craft always reminds us not only of the mastery in the furniture-making tradition upon which our company is built, but also, the evocative and expansive heritage of the natural world that we want to portray and protect in our work.
We believe this conversation is only beginning. Your participation makes craft meaningful and more rewarding in the creation of great spaces. Helping you create them is why craft makes us better, too.