Hard Living

Like thousands of aspiring young artists before him, Eric Weil, the furniture designer behind Brooklyn’s Oso Industries, came to the city looking for independence and inspiration. “When I moved to New York, I was full of starry-eyed dreams of being a sculptor,” he remembers now with a laugh. “What I ended up doing was casting concrete for eight years.”As an undergraduate at Oberlin College, he’d studied sculpture, holing himself up in his studio and dedicating himself to his craft. But in the city, he found the life of a struggling artist had little room for such romance.Rather than abandoning those dreams, Mr. Weil found ways of adapting them. The cramped apartments, the geometric grid of the sidewalks, and the urban landscape of steel and cement crept into his head and became the aesthetic touchstones of his developing sensibility. A year and a half ago, when after a half-dozen years of mold-making and casting for other designers – including Dennis Miller and Clodagh – Mr. Weil decided to launch a furniture collection of his own, the material he chose to concentrate on was not wood, marble, glass, or plastic. It was concrete.Concrete tables, concrete stools, concrete shelves, and concrete ottomans: Forms that might sound harsh and unappealing to some were for Mr. Weil an enticing challenge. “What I love about working with concrete was that it is a fairly new material in furniture design, so there are no expectations,” he says. “I don’t want to just make a four-legged, backed wooden chair; I want to see what I can come up with, without a tradition to follow.”Mr. Weil, through Oso Industries, focuses on creatively reinterpreting the material. Think concrete is plain and drab? Not when Mr. Weil is working with it: Oso’s pieces come in subtle custom colors, including cool robin’s egg blue flecked with bits of bronze, rich straw yellow with sandy striations, bottle green peppered with specks of clear glass, and a brick red that seems baked by the sun. Each color is mixed by hand with raw pigments (including a series of neutral tans and grays). “I must have tried 80 colors before I was satisfied,” Mr. Weil says. “But it is an extremely important way of subverting the materials. I mean, when most people think of concrete, vibrant colors are not what they expect.”Most people might also assume that concrete furniture weighs a ton, and therefore is impractical in a city of walk-up apartments. But Mr. Weil molds his concrete forms in strong, thin applications reminiscent of Venetian plastering. The result is an interior design oxymoron: pieces that are astonishingly lightweight while still retaining the appearance of heft. Indeed, though Mr. Weil’s most popular product, Rollerboy – a multifunctional foot-and-a-half-high cylinder on recessed wheels – has the look of solid stone, it is in fact nearly hollow, with a durable concrete skin only one-quarter inch thick. “I love the playfulness of it,” says Mr. Weil. “Here’s something that looks massive, but actually only weighs 20 pounds and is quite mobile. Here’s something that looks rough, but is actually smooth. People see it and don’t know if it’s fabric, stone, stain, or wood.”Mr. Weil prides himself on designing pieces that are versatile and clean. “The thing about concrete is that it is not even a craft material,” he says. “It’s always been used for sidewalks and construction – it’s utilitarian.” That tradition is his inspiration for designs that are adaptable and durable, like a tall bookcase of polished concrete and bamboo that doubles as a room divider, and a hollowed-out, drum-shaped coffee table that does also does duty as a bench. “I’ve tried to create pieces that are multipurpose and modular,” he says, “because given that everyone in the city lives in a shoebox, it’s the best way to maximize design.”Oso’s current collection also includes a spidery stool – named the Runt – which has a gem-cut top that appears to float over curved cherry legs, and Surf, a long, rounded table of polished concrete that is framed by a squared-off, Craftsman style mahogany base. Both are available online and through a few retail locations, including Sublime in Manhattan and showrooms in Cincinnati and San Francisco. But Mr. Weil also welcomes custom work; at the moment, nearly two-thirds of his business is special orders. “I encourage people to call and brainstorm with me,” he explains, “because that way in the end, they have something special, that just fits their needs. No two pieces are ever exactly alike.”Mr. Weil recently began working with a client in Englewood, N.J., who was looking for an exceptional tub in which to take her daily soak. Though she had considered products from several high-end bathroom suppliers, she decided that she wanted something entirely original. Together she and Mr. Weil collaborated to create a one-of-a-kind work of art: an oversized polished concrete tub that will be anchored in her bathroom like an ark. “It’s a nice process because clients can add their two cents,” says Mr. Weil, “so they feel like it’s partly theirs.”Prices range from $500 for a small Rollerboy ottoman to $1,500 for a custom tabletop and $8,000 for a custom tub.Oso Industries, 647 Myrtle Ave. #1, Brooklyn, 347-365-0389, www.osoindustries.com, eric@osoindustries.com. By appointment only.

Hard Living

Hard Living

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