George Davies

The Aluminum Lamp kickstarted my dig into George Davies, a California native now based in Salt Lake City, where George has been stuffing his “totally thrashed” Subaru Outback with materials and the chairs built from them since college. Immediately hooked on the clean lines and a lamp he produced years ago, I reached out to explore his design process a little further- and find out if he had any more of those lamps. 

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***SPOILER ALERT***

He had 5 more lamps- now available for purchase online [Link here]

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Kailin Brousseau (KB): What brought you to chairs?

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George Davies (GD): I had a lot of material exploration projects in university. I had access to different shops, labs, and tools that allowed me to experiment. I fell in love with raw materials like wood, steel, and aluminum and wanted to use them to build furniture. I was really enamored with Bauhaus-era designers and the brutalist approach to material experimentation. Initially, I did a lot of lighting design, but I naturally evolved into furniture.

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KB: Talk me through your process.

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GD: It starts with inspiration. It could be the way a metal panel is bent on an architectural structure or how a specific joint comes together in woodworking—something about the form and functionality. From there, I start sketching in CAD, refining the design while solving form and functional challenges. I create initial renders and just think about them for a while before making adjustments—most of the time, stepping away from a design helps me return with fresh ideas and improvements.

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Most of my work revolves around brake forming^[01], which is both the core of my design aesthetic and my biggest technical limitation. The process requires bending sheet metal into precise forms, but it comes with constraints—certain bends aren’t possible without material collisions, and sometimes I have to revise designs based on what the press-brake machine can physically handle. It’s a frustrating but rewarding challenge, as it forces me to think within a strict set of manufacturing parameters.

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What I love most about this process is its incredible precision and repeatability. Unlike traditional prototyping, where I’d build scale models out of wood or foam before committing to a full-scale piece, brake-forming allows me to prototype at full scale from the start. Whatever I design in CAD is exactly what I'll get in person, so I spend a lot of my time dialing everything in on the CAD side.  Even my first prototypes tend to be functional at a minimum-viable level, requiring only small refinements instead of major overhauls.

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Once I finalize a design, I send the parts off to be laser cut and brake-formed. When I bring the parts back, I clean up the surfaces, sand and debur the edges, and sometimes countersink holes for fasteners to create a seamless fit. Depending on the piece, I’ll either leave the surface raw, sandblast, hand-sand, or send it out for powder coating before assembly.

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A big part of my design philosophy is embracing raw materiality and manufacturing clarity. I intentionally leave many surfaces untouched, preserving the random printed mill/lot codes, scratches, and, most notably, the brutal witness marks etched into both sides of each bend by the press-brake tooling. These details tell the story of how the piece was made—they aren’t flaws, but rather evidence of the industrial process. I love that every bend, cut, and mark reflects the journey from sheet metal to finished form.

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KB: Are there any designers in particular that you’ve found inspiration in?

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GD: Yeah, definitely, there are a bunch. Gerrit Rietveld, Charlotte Perriand, Pierre Jeannert, Le Corbusier, the Eames, Jean Prouvé, and all of the powerhouse Bauhaus pioneers like Marcel Breuer, and Mies Van der Rohe. Those are kind of the OGs in my mind. I also take inspiration from architects like Paul Rudolph. His brutalist architecture inspired a lot of my design language, and was part of the foundation to my material study. 

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KB: I really felt that nod to brutalism when I saw your pieces. Do you have a current favorite from your catalog?

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GD: Oh man. It’s hard to say. I don’t know if I have a favorite piece but there are a few pieces that stand out based on the reception they’ve gotten compared to other pieces. The GD-SC1 slipper chair, for example—it’s smaller, incorporates classic wood joinery techniques, and embodies a sense of honest construction. It’s gotten the most attention from people and it will always be a favorite of mine. Overall, my favorites tend to shift depending on what I’m working on at the time. I get really excited about a project, become obsessed with it, and then once it’s done, I’m like, okay, what’s next?

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KB: I really felt that nod to brutalism when I saw your pieces. Do you have a current favorite from your catalog?

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GD: Oh man. It’s hard to say. I don’t know if I have a favorite piece but there are a few pieces that stand out based on the reception they’ve gotten compared to other pieces. The GD-SC1 slipper chair, for example—it’s smaller, incorporates classic wood joinery techniques, and embodies a sense of honest construction. It’s gotten the most attention from people and it will always be a favorite of mine. Overall, my favorites tend to shift depending on what I’m working on at the time. I get really excited about a project, become obsessed with it, and then once it’s done, I’m like, okay, what’s next?

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KB: Where did you start developing your metal fabrication skills? Was that in school, or earlier?

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GD: Yeah, I had zero welding experience before university. One day, I walked into a machine shop on campus to see if I could use the welding equipment. They asked if I knew how, and I lied and said ya totally and as nonchalantly as possible just left to watch some YouTube videos. I came back, and tried to prove to them I knew what I was doing and immediately failed to even set up the machines correctly. They called me out, but one of the shop workers, who became a friend, took pity on me and helped me actually learn how to weld, even teaching me how to TIG welding aluminum. That really set the foundation.

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KB: That’s too good. How old were you then?

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GD: I was 20.

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KB: So great.

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GD: Yeah, it was funny. Welders are super proud of their work and skills, and I didn’t want to come across as a poser. My senior thesis ended up being a bunch of welded steel furniture pieces, mostly chairs, with a loose concept tied to sustainable manufacturing techniques. But honestly, I just wanted to build a bunch of chairs while I had access to university resources. I made 10 steel chairs—pretty cool ones.

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KB: Who is your style resonating with most?

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GD: My goal is to create furniture that elevates atmospheres and space and highlights different aspects of the environment that it's in. That demographic is mostly boutique locations, custom home builders, and brands with high-end brick-and-mortar stores—places like Stone Island that buy furniture for their showrooms.

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My furniture is more occasional—comfortable, but meant to elevate a space. I also do design consulting, where I create concepts for stores or homes that don’t always result in furniture production. Ideally, I’d focus solely on furniture, but consulting helps fund my prototyping.

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KB: You dove into lighting a bit at the beginning- are there any objects outside of chairs that you have a soft spot for?

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GD: Chairs are my main thing, but I’m currently working on a chess pop-up project. It’s an underground, gritty chess night with both street hustlers and chess masters. I’m designing chess boards and pieces, and it’s exciting because they’re letting me incorporate my design language. Some projects don’t allow that, which makes them less interesting.

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KB: What are your thoughts on raw finishes versus powder coating? How do you decide?

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GD: Theoretically, all my pieces could be powder-coated, but I don’t coat everything because of cost. Most of my prototypes start as raw materials—sanded or sandblasted. If I envision something as powder-coated from the start, then I commit to it. The green chair, for example, has a substantial presence, so I chose an exuberant color to offset its brutality. When I was looking through these catalogs of swatches of powder coating colors, this neon green one was jumping out at me, which is funny because initially I envisioned the chair a cherry red, which would have been beautiful.

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But when I did some renders of it, and asked some of my friends, they weren’t convinced and I agreed with them. It kind of looked like a Lego. So I explored a different direction, and found that green one. That was around when Charlie XCX Brat album^[02] came out, and when I saw that color I don't know if my attraction to it came from a place of subliminal exposure- I had been seeing that color all the time. I just liked that neon green swatch. So I don't know if that had something to do with it, but it's kind of funny that they happened at the same time.

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KB: That color is super compelling- it grabbed me when I saw the first image of it. That green and the blue.

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GD: From the start of that one I totally pictured that blue. It was a little bit translucent so you can see the raw material underneath it still. You can see the break formed witness marks, which happen when the material gets bent right. It'll have areas of distress and places where it rubs against the machinery- the color highlights it perfectly. The chair was designed based on the color, and it's a great example of the customizability of my pieces. 

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KB: Do you see yourself developing a signature style, or will it always be an exploration?

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GD: No, I think it's always going to be like a little bit of an exploration. That was something that I was a little bit concerned about. I just launched my website and there are pieces that didn't make it on to the catalog or didn't make it on to the website at all but still live on the Instagram feed.

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It's partially because the form is just so different from some of the others that it almost detracts from the overall forms. I feel like each chair has a little bit of a different construction method, and for each I think I could create a whole line of similarly built pieces- like little families of pieces that share design language. It's just a matter of my time and resources, because I would love to do that. But then, you know, it just would take forever.

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KB: Before I let you go- do you have any more of the lamps I saw way back on your IG? ‍The sleek pretty one that you can touch anywhere to control. I love lighting and that post really did something to me.

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GD: Ha ha, yeah the whole thing is capacitive. I originally made 10, think I might have 5 left? I was selling them for like pretty cheap when I first made those, like less than they cost me to make. I’d break even if I sold those for like $350. They’re pretty easy to ship, so that part is cool. But I wasn’t really planning on making any more than those.