The fluid geometry of wood
- Sergey left academia to pursue furniture making
- Largely self-taught, he is guided by an intuitive, hands-on approach
- His pieces exhibit sculptural and geometric forms in hard wood
Sergey Levchin was four years into his PhD in Russian literature when he first tried his hand at woodworking. “It was Brooklyn in the mid-2000s. DIY was very popular with maker spaces popping up all over,” he says. Tired of the classroom and wanting to do something with his hands, Sergey remembers feeling an instant connection with the material and delighting in his own self-guided experimentation. As he spent more and more time in the workshop, friends and acquaintances took note and started asking for custom pieces of their own. “At some point, I was spending more time there than anywhere else, and I realised I could make a career out of it,” he says. In 2017, Sergey founded Waxwing Studio, where he designs and builds solid wood furniture that reflects an architectural sensibility.
INTERVIEW
I think of my designs as being very practical and functional. There is something about that functionality that immediately appealed to me. I could never be sure whether my academic writing was any good or not, the criteria are too fuzzy. With a piece of furniture, it either works or it does not. The immediacy of the proof of concept was instantly attractive.
Architecture and sculpture are important reference points. My pieces often feel hefty and structural, balancing rigorous geometric forms with a playful sensuality. There is the intellectual pleasure of reducing forms found in nature to their basic, stripped-down essences, and then reintroducing an irrational, chaotic element to bring them back to life.
I do some preliminary sketches just to get some kind of a general idea down, then I go to my computer to play around with 3D modelling software. For me, a lot of the creation happens in the making. I often start building the piece without finalising the design.
It is perhaps a nod to my past life as a literary scholar. A waxwing pops up in the first line of Nabokov’s Pale Fire. It was a spur of the moment choice, but somehow it stuck.
