Muuto Katalog 2023

59
Enfold Sideboard p. 127
Post Floor Lamp p. 138
“I have a pretty bad chair
collection habit. I have a lot
of chairs. Some people's
work really resonates with
me, and I love to have part
of their ideas in my space.”
Nicholas Bijan Pourfard is a luthier and furniture maker
based in southern California. He lives in Escondido, in a
home designed by Modernist architect and industrial designer
Walter S. White, where he is sensitively restoring
some of the building’s original features.
Nicholas Bijan Pourfard is not very good at sitting still. In
his home in Escondido, at the southernmost tip of California,
the luthier and furniture maker is just putting the finishing
touches to a bookcase he built for the space, which he moved
into a little over a year ago. And it’s not just any space: designed
by architect and industrial designer Walter S. White, the
building is considered a love letter to Modernist architecture,
pinned to mood boards the world over. It’s lucky, then, to have
found a new inhabitant in Pourfard.
His sensitivity in restoring the home’s special details is
mirrored in the intuitive way he has designed its interior,
populating it with chairs by designers he admires, antique
rugs from his father’s Persian rug store, and the odd custom
piece built in his workshop, too. The open-plan layout is all
warm white walls, honeyed light and organic materials—
Nicholas will choose forms and textures based on what he
sees, and what’s missing. But underpinning his slow, steady
approach is a rigorously honed eye—one attuned by years of
creating instruments from reclaimed skateboard decks, and
process-driven experiments with furniture-making.
None of which would have started at all, Pourfard explains,
if it hadn’t been for an ill-timed accident that kept
the student from his skateboard for some six months. Then,
as now, he was happy to find that wood could keep him busy.