Furniture, art, craft and the hard road to success

At its best, furniture is a harmonious blending of form and function, where beauty and innovation is matched only by labor, craftsmanship and attention to detail. The East End is a venue for some of the world’s top artistic furniture makers, and they set the bar high for those just starting out.

Pritam & Eames in East Hampton has been in business for nearly 30 years and has built a reputation for selling the very finest in studio furniture—all of it is as functional as it is beautiful. The firm’s current exhibition, “Top Form: Furniture 2008,” which runs through Tuesday, June 24, introduces new work by eight contemporary furniture makers, each with an expression as individual as his or her own personality.

One of those furniture makers is from the East End, and her ideas are very different from those of Pritam & Eames.

While Shelter Island’s Fran Taubman considers her work art, and is conceptual in her approach, Pritam & Eames owners Bebe Pritam Johnson and her husband, Warren Eames Johnson, will be the first to proclaim that their furniture is not art. Ms. Johnson bristles at the very mention of the word.

“Institutions are abandoning the word ‘craft,’ in exchange for art and design,” Ms. Johnson said, explaining the Pritam & Eames philosophy. “To make furniture is accomplishment enough.”

Ms. Taubman is well aware of the Pritam & Eames mindset, but she’s quite happy to share her artistic intent. In “Top Form,” Ms. Taubman’s “Square Bar Table” is constructed of numerous metal bars interconnected below a rectangle glass tabletop. In the past, her work was generally more organic and forged, but with the table she uses fabrication and machining techniques and allows the joints to show.

“I’m not trying to hide the joints,” Ms. Taubman said, explaining that fabrication is laborious and her primary concept is about making that challenging process known. The table has movement to it, and she names minimalist painter Piet Mondrian as an influence for her geometric lines.

It’s clear that the merits of her craftsmanship and the quality of her work carry Ms. Taubman through at the furniture gallery where art is a bad word, but not everyone trying to make furniture on the East End is so lucky. Ms. Johnson said Ms. Taubman is the only local artisan she’s brought into Pritam & Eames.

“I don’t think this is a crafts community,” Ms. Johnson said of the East End, lamenting the days when the word “craft” had a serious and respectable connotation. “It’s more of an arts community.”

Furniture maker and artist Ryan Bollman, 38, of Wainscott has dedicated his life to the pursuit of both art and craft, and though the quality of his work demonstrates that his talent is flourishing, making a decent living from it is no easy task. He has not been able to secure a place at Pritam & Eames, but Mr. Bollman is no stranger to the Johnsons or their business.

Ms. Johnson said that apprenticeship is basically a thing of the past, with universities taking over the role of mentor, but Mr. Bollman was lucky enough to apprentice with David Ebner, a furniture maker in Brookhaven, who is also represented in “Top Form.” Mr. Bollman often came by the furniture shop to deliver Mr. Ebner’s furniture, cart things away or do the occasional side job for the Johnsons. “I worked for him on and off for six years,” Mr. Bollman said, reflecting on the path of a furniture artist in his home and studio hidden in the potato fields of Wainscott.

He hails from Cincinnati, Ohio, and spent four years in the U.S. Army training soldiers for the first Gulf War before even beginning his journey into the arts and landing on the South Fork. After leaving the Army and “being a drunk for a year,” Mr. Bollman had his first serious exposure to sculpture, metal and wood work at the University of Cincinnati. But it was not until he joined the artists commune Nova’s Ark in Bridgehampton in 1999 that he perfected many of his skills and embarked on the arduous path he travels today.

The furniture maker, unlike the average sculptor, must be as strong a craftsman as he is a visionary. The tradition of apprenticeship and learning difficult skills using expensive tools and materials is nearly a requirement for a person to transcend being a hobbyist and becoming a true artisan. Getting started is no small feat.

The objects displayed in Mr. Bollman’s home demonstrate his resume of valuable and marketable skills. He said he takes commissions and occasionally does custom fabrications to pay his rent, eat and scrimp by while he continues trying to make his way as a furniture maker and sculptor on the East End.

A cursory inventory of his creations, both practical and not, includes plastic molds and castings in various materials, smooth and attractive wood forms both functional and artistic, examples of metalwork, an intricate canvas lampshade on a custom metal frame, fiberglass and resin shapes, shelves and even a 10-foot-long highly streamlined motorboat he built from scratch.

Despite Mr. Bollman’s abilities and earning a spot with the now closed Bravura Gallery in Southampton, he said he has yet to sell one piece of his larger furniture. The tables, benches and chairs reference nautical themes, ocean waves, bones and other natural forms.

“You do these shows, and you have a lot of faith and you put a lot into them, then, there you are, broke,” he said, adding, “If Pritam & Eames showed my work instead of Bravura, I’d probably be somewhere else.”

Ms. Johnson said Mr. Bollman is still aways off from showing at Pritam & Eames. “He really sees himself more as an artist/sculptor,” she said, again noting her proclivity for craft. Mr. Johnson agreed and said it’s difficult to find buyers for certain work. “We have to see a constant output that indicates a direction we can do something with.”

When he first tried to get into Pritam & Eames, the Johnsons turned furniture maker Andy Buck down, but they gave him some advice and direction.

“He took our criticism, and a couple years later we heard from him again. And here we are,” Mr. Johnson said, pointing to Mr. Buck’s carved, painted and lacquered “Oval Table,” featured in the “Top Form” show.

Ms. Johnson said people often say the furniture at Pritam & Eames should be in a museum. “It misses the whole point,” she said, noting that no matter how beautiful, “the honor of use” is the greatest one for furniture. “A chair should be comfortable, a cabinet should contain things, a table should serve or support,” Ms. Johnson said. “We’re very much committed to the beautiful object for everyday use—that’s our mantra.”