Malcolm Majer seeks out the unexpected in his designs. The Baltimore maker likes to disrupt the formalities of traditional furniture with a mix of unconventional shapes and innovative materials. “My most successful works are the ones that surprise me,” he tells Business of Home.
Growing up between Baltimore and Chicago, Majer was always building small worlds with functional objects as a child. He made his first piece of furniture when he was just 13 years old, a media table assembled from scrap lumber and drywall screws. After falling in love with welding and sculpting in high school, he studied furniture design at the Rhode Island School of Design, where he honed his ability to craft artful yet ultra-utilitarian furnishings. “I focus on working in three dimensions,” he says. “I’m always trying to find ways to draw the viewer’s eye around all sides of the design.”
In 2018, Majer launched his namesake studio with an architecturally savvy series of steel, aluminum and wood furniture, including chairs, a bench and a table. “After meeting a group of local artists, including my now-wife, I had what felt like an epiphany,” he says. “I could use my experience with metals to make things that were fun for me.”
The furniture maker finds that his best results come when he experiments with forms at full scale, so he often creates random parts and starts configuring them on the worktable, editing as he goes. He primarily works with metals, including steel, brass and bronze, which requires a high level of craftsmanship to both assemble and hand-finish. “There’s a lot of TIG [tungsten inert gas] welding, grinding and sanding involved, but I love the process,” he says. “A piece can take anywhere from a few hours for a small vessel to over 100 hours for a complex table, though my favorite works all fall in a 10-to-20-hour range, because they retain a vitality that may be crushed through overworking.”
Though striking in form, Majer’s designs are often not only practical but supply more than one intended use. His 2022 collection for Otras Formas, for instance, includes a floor lamp with an adjoining accent table—designed in collaboration with Alex Lithgow—and a cobalt blue steel-and-wood chair connected to a two-tiered perforated cabinet. “I aim to create works that I find emotionally resonant, but designing multifunctional furniture allows me to play with different forms and explore the ways they interact,” he says.
This month, Majer will showcase a new outdoor chair at the “Hot Seat” exhibition at the KunstHaus gallery in Alexandria, Virginia, and unveil his first jewelry box design at an upcoming show at the Cristina Grajales gallery in New York. He also recently completed a series of aluminum sculptures for a corporate client, featuring four 6-foot-tall freestanding forms in various finishes. “I have been slowly developing a deeper understanding of lighting, so I am looking to incorporate more light fixtures in future collections,” he says. “My goal is to combine my love for craftsmanship with my desire to create furniture that offers an element of surprise.”
