IN CONVERSATION WITH:
FURNITURE CREATOR & ARTIST, COLIN HARRIS MCTIGUE_
AT HOME WITH A.LONDON February 2023
Since our move to the city that never sleeps, and in line with our B Corp™ announcement, we have had the pleasure of meeting a range of local artisans within the industry, including Colin Harris-McTigue, a New York based creator and artist. Our Marketing Assistant, Elysia, had the pleasure of interviewing him, to find out more behind his work and where he draws his inspiration from.
Elysia (Accouter): Hi Colin, lovely to meet you. How are you?
Colin (Colin Harris-McTigue): Hey, great to meet you. I am good thank you, just working and hanging out.
E: Great, so to begin...in a few words, how would you describe yourself as a designer?
C: I love plastic. One of the earlier pieces I ever did was a table. I used to live in Chinatown with my brother and I loved going to all the little shops. I’d see all the mass-produced goods, and I remember I got a bunch of fake flowers and cut off all the petals and cast them in resin. I made it into a floral headboard. I’m fascinated with the reproductions of reality. Someone makes a fake flower that's inspired by a real flower, and then I can use that to make something beautiful again. Sort of continuing this chain of production.
E: Repurposing local product is so admirable, and it is actually something that follows our B Corp responsibilities here at A.LONDON!
“I’m fascinated with the reproductions of reality.”
Colin Harris McTigue
New York Creator & Artist
I was making some really ugly stuff at first. I never was trained in art or anything, I never went to art school. My next adventure was when I got a job with my friend Marco managing a production house for scenic carpentry. We would build sets for music festivals, DJ rigs, and I learned how to use multiple mediums there and from there just started making my own stuff and selling it. Linked up with a couple interior designers in New York and it was off to the races. At first they would send me all these weird projects to design, and asked me to build things that I had never done before and I would say ‘oh yeah, I've done that many times’ haha! But there was a lot of learning on the job and you know now I'm what, 10 years into owning my own business. Yeah, it feels great, so I'd like to blend classical ideas of art. A lot of the pieces I've taken, I've made lamps that are inspired by Kandinsky paintings and repurposed them into furniture.
E: Following this then, how did art and designing come about for you? Can you give us an insight into your background?
C: Well, I grew up in Brooklyn, New York. My father was a plumber, so I worked with him for a long time until I was about 24 and then I started doing carpentry work. I moved to New Orleans and ‘reclaimed furniture’ was all the rage in America at the time. I then got a job working with a Carpenter who built furniture out of reclaimed wood. To be honest, it’s not my favourite style, but I'm glad I got to learn how to do it. From there, I started basically going into the shop on Saturdays and Sundays on my off days and building my own furniture.
E: Where do you obtain your inspiration from? Is there a particular designer or artist? Or even something completely unrelated that inspires you?
C: In terms of furniture artists that inspire me, I love the 70s Italian styles, you know, the Gaetano Pesce’s of the world and all these types of plastics and the bright colours. That's what really gets me, I love things to be bright and colorful and playful. I think also coming from New England in New York, things can get very grey very quickly, so it's very nice to offset all of the concrete and stone of the big city with something fun, playful and plastic, to almost remind you that cities can be fun and that everything doesn't have to be so austere!
E: Tell us how you started your business, and where you see yourself going.
C: I started this business this version of my business 4-5 years ago, called ‘Bluebird Custom Design Build’. The name is after my father who was a plumber, but also loved birds. He was a bird aficionado, and his favorite bird was the blue bird. It's a very friendly bird. Some birds can be very aggressive. Blue birds are not. It's very beautiful. So I named it Bluebird Customs as a homage to the man who taught me how to build things in the first place. My father. Right now we mainly work on high end interiors, so anywhere from built in cabinets to custom furniture pieces. Where I would like it to go is, I've been doing fine art for many years, and I would like to transition into doing more large scale sculptures, and that's where I'm hoping to take it within, 5 to 6 years.
E: Do you have any spectacular goals with your career?
C: I have to tell you this, I am living my big dream right now. I was looking through an old notebook recently, from maybe 10 years ago, and I had written in it my goal of being a full time business owner of custom furniture. And I did it! There were lots of failures and there was lots of roadblocks such as close calls with making the rent, but it's very satisfying to have worked so hard to have gotten through those trials. There were many weeks where I worked 80-90 hours for years, and so to be able to go into a workshop every morning and not feel any type of regret and be able to enjoy every day- it's a real blessing for me. It really is, and I'm very proud of it. It's one of the things I'm most proud of in my life.
E: It’s so inspiring nice to hear that, so congratulations for achieving your dream!
C: Thank you .You know, whenever you see a montage in a movie, it makes everything look beautiful and lovely, and looking back at it or saying that I now own this business... it's nice, but there was lots of lots of bumps along the way and there's still bumps. You know, there's still mess ups. If I were to really think of another big dream goal, it would be to build a house that I designed from scratch, so hopefully in the next 10 years we get that done.
E: In that case, do you have a dream client that you would love to design for? Perhaps a collaboration?
C: There’s dream clients who see your vision as a designer and allow you to flex your muscles. I think sometimes, a lot of what we can do gets toned down because people want things to look a certain way, or to follow current trends. But to me, a dream client would be someone who lets me have full creative control.
E: Do you have a piece of advice for any aspiring young designers that want to become a part of the industry?
C: So I think as with anything learning guitar, playing chess, whatever it is you want to do. There's so much hard work that goes into being able to create anything good. In any field. I think that in our culture people watch YouTube and see people build things in two seconds, and it almost gives this false idea of what hard work truly is. I would say that the only thing that has ever gotten me anywhere in life is just working incredibly hard, failing and then learning to not fail the same way. You can do whatever you want, but you just have to know that it's going to be long hours and hard work, and eventually someone will see your vision.
E: Lastly, what is your most favourite and least favourite trend from the last 10 years in design.
C: My least favorite is that people want to add brass to everything. Not everything needs brass!
My most favorite is that it seems that people are moving towards more organic forms. Curves are back. Curved cabinets, curved archways, weird-shaped tables are becoming more of a staple in moderately priced design.
E: Amazing! Thank you so much for your time Colin, it has been great to learn more about you as a designer and your wonderful work.
C: Thanks, it’s been great! Appreciate it.
A.LONDON’s New York Office
You can find Karis, A.LONDON’s Associate Director, at our New York Studio at 1 Crosby St, 3rd Floor, New York, NY 10013. Get in touch to find out more about our award-winning Interior Design & Architectural services.