My approach to furniture design mirrors my approach to life: it is of the present.
I wasn't always like that. Educated and trained as a lawyer, I spent the first 12 years of my professional life practicing law in various forms. Then, one day, as I rode the subway home from my job in Boston, a complete stranger asked me a very simple question " If you didn’t have any limitations in terms of education, money, skills, what would you do?" This question changed my life.
It sparked a freedom in me. A freedom that took me back to my childhood.
I remembered, as a child, being excited by my father as I watched him build our family home in the Bulgarian city of Dupnitsa. I remembered being inspired as I watched him then build each piece of furniture that went into that home. I remembered wanting to be creative. With my own two hands.
And, suddenly, I had an answer to the stranger's question. An answer I had known long ago, but forgotten: I wanted to design furniture.
I started on the creative path of furniture design, with no experience or training (only a new found certainty). My first step was to sign-up for woodworking classes at Boston Center for Adult Education, where I learned the basics of woodworking; I took these classes for a year. Later I assembled my own small, but very functional workshop, where in the span of three years, I designed and made ten pieces, while working full time at Boston’s Probate Court.
I am proud of the experience I have gained through independent study and work, but teaching oneself is a very isolating process, both on the human level and on the academic level. With the desire to become a part of the furniture design community, I applied to and was accepted at SCAD in the fall of 2010.
My life experience has led me to develop my aesthetic as a designer, which does not cling to the past nor is it concerned with what I or anyone else perceives the future to hold. Rather it is about the present: what I encounter on a walk through the park, a picture that intrigues me, traditional furniture that yearns to be brought into the here and now. With my designs I strive to create pieces that are not simply functional or aesthetically pleasing, but connect to the user on a deeper level. The piece begins as personal expression, but through this deeper connection becomes an expression of the owner’s heart.