Left: Fairbank marking
a mortise and tenon
location for the leg of
a desk.
Below: Euclid Vase,
2010, white slip-cast
porcelain, hand-painted
gold glaze accents,
7%X9% in.
Opposite: The Osiris
Chandelier prototype
hangs next to Fairbank’s
clamp rack. Below it sits
a discarded prototype
of a table lamp shade.
“I like the idea of making furniture that incorporates the funda-
mental functions of furniture while making abstract references.”
Barrett Writing Desk, one of Fairbank’s most successful designs is
a simple ebonized desk fitted with drawers that look like old library
card catalogs. The card catalog, a fixture that the outspoken library
preservationist Nicholson Baker once called “expressive of needful
social trust and communal achievement,” brings a civic element
into the domestic realm. Or, one could just cram junk into it. Either
way, the piece is perhaps expressive of a desire to acknowledge the
value of scholarship outside of institutional constructs.
Fairbank’s work expresses a sort of manic eclecticism that many
call postmodern, but his works express none of the inside-jokey
feel that goes with that term: “I don’t think I fit into the ironic design
quotient. I would never make a fruit bowl
out o f fruit,
”he says.
It takes some gall to avoid the temptation of a clever punch line, and
perhaps Fairbank’s past work as a commercial designer has led him
to considered decisions about fulfilling the needs of his clients over
expressing virtuosity.
“I’m both a designer and a fabricator. Ninety percent of what
I’m asked to do is to work with other people’s designs. Maybe
there’ll come a day when I say, ‘These are the pieces that I make. If
you want to buy one of them, that’s great, and if not, you’re shop-
ping at the wrong store.’ But for now, I’m billing myself as a custom
fabricator who also designs his own collection of furniture.” I sus-
pect he has held these conversations with himself before, taking
a careful approach that allows him to do work that challenges him
while also running a business.
While Fairbank prizes doing his own woodworking, he uses
vendors for upholstery, metal, glass work or industrial materials,
while outsourcing jobs like lathe-turning. He looks to connections
from his jobs with industrial and interior designers, as well as local
vendors in the loose network of Brooklyn craftspeople. The bor-
ough’s craft renaissance has energized him, but he and studio mates
have begun to feel the effects of gentrification on the industrial
areas where artists and makers keep studios. “The fire department
is coming around more and calling us on technicalities more. There
is pressure on work spaces here. A lot of the aspects that made
Williamsburg desirable as a place to be for artists are threatened.”
The times have been hard in general for makers, but Fairbank,
indefatigable, draws on all of his experiences. He told me that he
designed a chandelier for the annual showcase BKLYN Designs
after asking a friend who works at a high-end showroom probably
the most honest question makers in these times can ask themselves:
Whatsells?+
M im i Luse, who lives in Brooklyn, writes fo r T h e
Brooklyn Rail, Art
Papers, Black Book
magazine and
The L
magazine.
048 american craft aug/sep 10
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