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An Interview with Designer/Maker Evan Z. Crane

AH: Where in Brooklyn did you grow up?

EC: I grew up on 13th Street between 3rd & 4th Avenue. It is the borderline between Park Slope and Gowanus. It has all the colorful aspects of a neighborhood where residential meets industrial. When I was a kid, if you parked your car on the lower third of the block it was almost guaranteed you would get your tires stolen. It was, and still is sometimes, referred to as South Slope. The Daily News once called it “The Frayed Edges of Park Slope.” That is by far my favorite moniker.

AH: When did you know you wanted to be a designer? How did you get started?

EC: I don’t think I ever specifically said to myself, I want to be a designer. I came at design through the Fine Arts. I went to college for painting at the School for Visual Arts in Manhattan. From a young age I had a love of building, cultivated by working on my parents’ old row house in Brooklyn. I found myself gravitating towards sculpture because of it. Design always seemed like a natural part of the process to making any three-dimensional object, regardless of function. Everything I make comes from a hand drawing first, and that drawing is generated from an idea or vision. It is exactly the same method I used to make paintings and sculpture.

AH: Were you always interested in furniture design? What drew you to it?

EC: I wasn’t always interested in furniture design. Toward the end of college I was doing large wooden carvings made from recycled New York City timbers. They were the biggest pieces of wood I could get at the time for dirt cheap. The timbers would come with mortises and tenons cut in them, evidence of decades-old woodworking. A friend gave me a book about Japanese joinery and I dove into the subject. The complex joints really blew my mind—they were functional sculpture. I started to make simple furniture and it was a totally different experience. I was using all the same principles of art—form, proportion, composition, materials—but they directly related to a physical human experience. I think realizing the connection that people could have with furniture is what sealed the deal for me. The daily physical contact could make the user’s experience intimate and powerful. Like a relic or artifact that is activated by touch.

AH: The newer designs give animalistic qualities to different furniture pieces. How did you come to this combination?

EC: I’m always striving to imbue personality into my work, or draw it out of a form I’m developing. In 2014, I started experimenting with hides and pelts. I made a captain’s chair with shearling and leather. There was a tuft of the shearling that hadn’t been sheared totally. I was amazed at what just that little patch did for the piece. It gave it such a shot of personality that I had to explore the concept more. Naturally, I finally landed on the wildest thing I could get my hands on. I always want my pieces to look as if they can walk out of the room under their own power. The sheep’s pelt combined so well with the other materials that it actually happened. I always feel grateful when a piece I make can live on its own after all the initial hard work.

AH: The sheep’s wool pieces seem perfect for a winter home. How do they fit here in Brooklyn, do you think?

EC: I fell in love with the raw material itself and its essence. I think that the creature credenza and the fuzzy captain have a real place in Brooklyn and not just because it can get pretty frosty in the winter. I think that they are different and interesting pieces, anything but part of the norm. Brooklyn has rapidly become a place that celebrates that as a virtue more than any other in New York City. Honestly, I wasn’t thinking one bit about if the pieces would work or not, or if anyone would buy them (literally and figuratively). I even encountered a good bit of negativity when they came out. I didn’t really have much of a choice in the matter. The ideas just came to me and I had to stay true to them, and that’s pretty Brooklyn right there.

AH: How long have you had your studio in the Brooklyn Navy Yard? Do you have people working for you or do you make everything yourself?

EC: I have been working in the Navy Yard for about six years, I do have people work for me on occasion but it’s mostly a one-man show. I could definitely shop out some of the stuff I’ve designed but I still want to connect to each piece before it goes to someone. I think it’s important for smaller, independent designer/makers to be personally connected to what they are producing. It is what separates us from bigger-name manufacturers. Those differences should be embraced and not seen as a small-scale problem.

AH: What do you think about the redevelopment of the Brooklyn Navy Yard in recent years? What about in Brooklyn in general?

EC: I think the changes to the Navy Yard are much like the changes to Brooklyn in general: overcrowding. I could be upset about “gentrification” like other natives, but realistically people just need places to live and work. New York’s population has gotten so much bigger, even in just the last five years. All of these people can’t live in Manhattan, so Brooklyn is the next logical location. The real issue in the Yard is the shift from manufacturing to Tech, Fashion, Design, the Arts—all good things to have around you except when it comes to your rent. Manufacturing requires longer leases and lower square footage prices, two things that don’t jive with the new Brooklyn. There are more people trying to get in and rent less space for more money. This pushes out manufacturers, the very people the Navy Yard is supposed to be specifically for. Luckily, it is still moving slower there than in the rest of Brooklyn. You have got to be thankful for any little leg up you get these days.

I’ll be in the Yard for as long as I can. There is a great community of makers there. It’s like nowhere else in Brooklyn, the last bastion of centralized manufacturing. When it goes, Brooklyn will never be the same for makers.

AH: What kinds of designs are you thinking about for the future?

EC: I’ve been moving more and more towards big, comfortable pieces. I usually don’t have it all worked out until later in the season. I know for sure a bed, a club chair, and a couch, to name a few. I can’t wait to keep exploring the creature credenza concept. There are so many possibilities with that particular piece, it’s an endless source of fun.