Why we list the designer, the year and the wood

Galleries caption their work: artist, title, year, material. We think furniture deserves the same. So every piece here carries a placard — the designer, the year, the wood — because those facts are the difference between a product and an object.

A caption changes how you look. It tells you there is an author and an intention behind the thing, and invites you to judge it as design rather than merchandise.

Facts that aren't trivia

Knowing that Danielle Siggerud drew the Androgyne, or that a chair is solid oak rather than veneer, isn't trivia. It's how you tell the made from the manufactured, and how you decide what's worth keeping.

Provenance is just respect, written down.

Each of those facts has consequences you can feel. A named designer means a considered intention; solid oak rather than veneer means a piece that can be sanded and repaired for decades rather than replaced when its skin wears.

How you tell the made from the manufactured

The placard is really a tool for judgement. Once you know the designer, the year and the material, a piece stops being an anonymous option in a catalogue and becomes a specific object with a specific claim on your attention.

That is how a collection is built rather than merely assembled — one informed decision at a time, each based on what a piece actually is rather than how it happens to look in a photograph.

Read the placard, then the room

So read the placard, then read the room. The facts come first because they are what let you choose well; the feeling follows, and lasts longer for being grounded in something real.

Provenance, in the end, is just respect written down — for the designer who drew the piece, the maker who built it, and the person who will keep it.