Furniture designers give back with Blank Canvas Project
These days, it’s fashionable to give back.
You can sport a red cell phone to support fighting AIDS in Africa, wear a yellow bracelet to show solidarity with cancer victims or make a donation during the “American Idol†telethon to help kids around the world.
But what kind of furniture can you buy to show you care?
“I’m in Los Angeles, and we’re surrounded by actors and musicians (who support charities),†said Dario Antonioni, founder of the retail and environmental design studio Orange 22. “But it’s not happening in the furniture industry.â€
That’s why Antonioni launched the Botanist Blank Canvas Project, a unique program that raises money for charity through the sale of high-end outdoor furniture.
Antonioni started the Botanist Blank Canvas Project by creating a collection of simple, clean-lined furniture that can be used both indoors and outdoors: a bench, a cocktail table and an end table, all made from powder-coated aluminum.
Then he asked eight prominent furniture designers to put their unique spin on each of the three pieces. Each designer agreed to accept a lower royalty to design the products than they would normally receive, and in exchange, Antonioni’s company agreed to match the Furniture designer’s royalties with a donation to the charity of the designer’s choice.
The inaugural collection will feature designs from Yves Behar, Margo Chase, Milton Glaser, Kahi Lee, Karim Rashid, Joseph Ricchio, Massimo and Lella Vignelli and Claude Zellweger, and the proceeds will go to charities that support causes as varied as the environment, architecture, refugees and AIDS.
Antonioni said part of what makes the project possible is the fact that each designer agrees to work on the same pieces of furniture. That helps keep production costs down, and it also makes it easier to convince the designers to Furniture accept less money for their work.
“It’s a turnkey platform,†Antonioni explained. “So the workload on the designer has been drastically reduced.â€
Where the designers get to express their creativity is in the colors they choose and in creating a pattern that’s cut into each one.
Designer Kahi Lee, for example, chose a pattern of keys to symbolize finding the “key†to curing cancer and asked that her matching royalties go to the Cancer Research Institute. And Margo Chase, who created a design using the silhouettes of birds, will be donating her proceeds to the Sierra Club.
The complete line of Botanist Blank Canvas benches, cocktail tables and end tables will be available for sale to the trade at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair, taking place May 17-20 in New York. Antonioni said the pieces will retail for under $4,600 each.
“They’re really a piece of art, and it’s really affordable luxury,†Antonioni said.
Each piece will also come with a label that will indicate who designed the piece and which charity it will support.
The designers will help raise even more money for their charities during a an event at the Chelsea Art Museum on May 18 where each of the prototypes, signed by the designers will be sold in a silent auction.
Antonioni said he’s been inspired by the overwhelming response he’s received from the design community about the Botanist Blank Canvas Project.
“We already have people lined up for year two and year three,†Antonioni said.
“It’s just really beautiful and magical, and we’re really lucky that it’s been embraced,†Antonioni said. “The Furniture real power here is they get to do what they love and they get to give back in the end.â€
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