Geoff McKonly

"My furniture and lighting designs draw on my training as a fine art photographer. I think of guiding the eye of the viewer throughout a design, the textures inside of it, and the many relationships between the grain, color, and the shape of the pieces, holding your interest without you wanting to look away."

In his pieces, Geoff strives for the interweaving of balance and connection. Balance is the thickness of the back of a chair as it becomes the thinness of a leg, or the carved handle that blends into the edge of a curved door. Connection is the grain of the wood and its natural defects, reminiscent of both luxury and nature. Tying it together are bold riffs on traditional joinery adding strength.

Geoff spends a lot of time composing with the grain in a piece highlighting natural defects. As a former boat builder, he uses a lot of curvature. He works with woods native to New England, often finding underutilized woods. He works with hand tools a lot, allowing a freedom to create outside the realm of a bit shape or the limit of a tool.

Geoff McKonly Furniture is a studio in Southampton, Massachusetts. Geoff's been designing and producing collection pieces as well as custom furniture since 2014. He received a degree in photography from the University of the Arts. He learned woodworking building wooden boats for two decades and is a self-taught furniture maker.