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Thomas Oliphant brings handcrafted joy to his mechanical furniture designs
By Holly Saari
Photo by Eric Moore
But Oliphant’s Midway studio, a haphazard collection of half-finished works and piles of dusty prototypes, reveals his more intense side: The obsessive personality that leads him to get so lost in a project he no longer gives a whit about his bottom line. “If there was a book on how to lose money, the ‘Rocking Chair’ would be on the cover,” he quips about his signature design.
For the past 15 years, the 47-year-old designer has created the spare, finely detailed pieces that have earned him accolades in national publications, and exhibits at the Chicago Design Show and the Goldstein Museum of Design. But he started out on a different road. He earned his bachelor’s in architecture at the University of Minnesota, worked for five years in the field, and then dutifully enrolled at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield, Michigan intending to get his master’s in architecture.
“The truth is, I loved telling my relatives at reunions that I was an architect,” Oliphant says. “But there were too many constraints, too many people involved. And my sense of scale was all wrong—I didn’t notice the envelope or the siting; I noticed things like doorknobs and stair railings.”
After one classmate taught him to weld, and another showed him the basics of machine toolery, Oliphant switched gears, finishing his master’s of fine art in Cranbrook’s design department. That’s where he developed the design for “Rocking Chair,” which he’s reworked many times since. The piece is a wink to the Victorian tête-à-tête chair—which allowed for polite parlor talk but no touching—and the American rocking chair. With two seats joined on an axis, the “Rocking Chair” requires two sitters to throw their weight back and forth in see-saw-like unison.
Photo Provided by Thomas Oliphant
The linear look of Oliphant’s designs—from the rolling “Smarty” cocktail table to dining chairs made from fabric used for lawnmower grass-catching bags to polished nickel and steel chandeliers that evoke Saturn’s rings—is inspired by his fascination with vintage boats, airplanes, and bicycles.
“I don’t think it’s possible to make anything worth listening to, or looking at, or sitting in, if it wasn’t created with a sense of play,” he says. See his other playful works at www.thomasoliphant.com.
Pop Quiz
Drink of choice: Martini with Beefeater ginGuilty Pleasure: Late-night TV with the sound off
Favorite possession: Viking range stove
On his nightstand now: A biography of Mies van der Rohe
If not a designer, he’d be: An ER doctor or a line chef
Holly Saari is the editorial intern of Midwest Home.
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