About a store
January 18, 2003 | 12:00am
These three men have such similar backgrounds that one wonders why it’s only now that they decided to open a store together. They have been friends for more than 20 years, connected by more ways than one and proving that the six degrees of separation theory is largely overstated. Well, it is a small town. But still.
Consider the case for Claude Tayag, Matthew Brill and Mike Aguas – owners of the new store About Design – as brothers in another lifetime. First, they all started in their teens wanting to be in different professions (Claude took up architecture, Matthew psychology, and Mike business) and all ended up designing and manufacturing furniture.
Second, they have very common family backgrounds. Claude’s family was into construction in the 1970s when he started making furniture – at first for himself, later for friends and before he knew it, he was designing for clients. Mike’s father was an architect, exposing him to machinery and raw materials like metal which he would later work with. Matthew’s mother was an interior decorator, his father was in the wallpaper business while his sister attended the New York School of Interior Design.
Third, their works are known by many design fans who may not necessarily know who they are. One can easily spot Claude’s wave bench in design magazines or books, yet until this store opened he had no showroom where he could display his work, having closed the one at ABC Galleries in Remedios Circle. Though Matthew maintains his shop at the Shangri-La Makati, mainstream shoppers had no idea that someone was making old-fashioned trunks in the country. The same for Mike who, although he has been part of Movement 8 exhibits abroad, is hardly known by home builders here.
And that, it seems, is the whole point why these Pampanga-based furniture makers opened the store About Design in Glorietta 3 late last year. Ayala people were hand-picking merchants for the high-end mall and offered Claude the much coveted space.
"I said, for what? For food or lifestyle store? They said both," Claude relates. "I can cook but I don’t know how to run a restaurant. So I thought, maybe a store. We thought about it and I invited them and they said yes."
Claude had already exhibited with Mike the year before at the Lopez Museum (with Jon Pettyjohn) and was very familiar with Matthew’s work since he would order fittings from the exporter for his own work. The three men’s connection is much more personal than just being in the same field. For instance, Claude’s wife Mary Ann was the best friend of Matthew’s wife Carol since grade school.
About Design showcases frunishings by three artists working with three different materials: wood, leather and wrought iron.
When you put three creatives together, the combination can be explosive: Either it creates such harmony that it resonates with passion for the craft or it falls apart. In this case, there was no clashing of egos, no prima diva tantrums, just three men who enjoyed being together and talking shop over a bottle of wine and homecooked food.
Matthew just laughs at the oft-repeated advice "never put up a business with friends." He says, "The store is our pet project because we’re all doing other things that keep us busy. We wanted to have fun with something that would bring us to Manila once in a while. It’s more for enjoyment than a business venture. It represents where we’re from and the whole craft."
Since the three men work with different materials, About Design offers more choices to shoppers yet this also narrows it to a market segment that truly appreciates craftsmanship.
It’s also interesting to see how the designs, though they all put function before form, are influenced by very diverse things: Claude takes his cue from Scandinavian and Japanese design; Mike, being an avowed outdoor person, designs with nature mind; Matthew is fascinated by travel and how people lived at the turn of the century.
"This store is all about Philippine-made products," says Claude. "And we custom-make furnishings to clients’ specifications and needs."
Claude’s witty wood designs are both very sinuous and linear. For example, his apothecary chest of drawers is heaven-sent for abubot collectors; his temaki vase, yes it’s shaped like temaki sushi, satisfies one who’s looking for unique forms.
Then there are his bureau with pigeon holes and the Red Tape organizer. The latter was designed to hold envelopes but it’s not uncommon for people to leave it as it is because it’s a beautiful sculptural piece. There’s an emphasis on neatness, on providing people (especially obsessive compulsives) with what they need – containers for the million and one things that strangely accumulate in such a short period.
There is also an understated humor in the way Claude finds everyday things and reinvents them. A sungka becomes a holder for ball candles or as Claude did at one party, a bar for condiments which he put in small cups; a pencil holder looks like a wooden Swiss cheese; a desk clock takes the shape of a sliced baguette. And only when we saw up-close some wooden figurines did we realize they were actually a belen! (We thought they were salt and pepper shakers.)
Claude’s kitchenn accessories highlight both Japanese and Kapampangan influences. His rice holder takes a very oriental form, so does his loaf tray with its slatted bottom. And the aprons! If you want to know what Kapampangan cooks sing when they’re making bringhe, buy one of these because on the front, lyrics of Kapampangan songs Ating Ku Pung Singsing and O Caca, O Caca are printed.
Under the brand Bale Dutung (House of Wood), Claude’s works bear the stamp of his love affair with wood in its natural color, where red narra is red and yellow narra is yellow, not darkened to conform to Western design trends or imitate the wenge wood which is very popular in home stores.
"I like showing the grain of the wood, of making the lines as simple as possible," he says. Over the years, Claude’s work has shown Filipinos that simplicity and plainness are two different things.
If Claude’s philosophy is for the most part to leave wood as it is, Mike Aguas’ work with metal highlights how this seemingly unbending material can be manipulated in forms traditionally not associated with metal.
Mike has a fascination for machinery and technology. His company MCCA has been acquiring the latest equipment since it started in 1992. Early this year, it will complete its glass-blowing facility.
Says Mike, "After 9/11, I thought the export market would collapse. On the contrary, people in the US started to decorate their houses with small items. It was amazing. Locally, it’s the same."
Mike’s designs are influenced by his love for sports and the outdoors. He flies ultra light planes, paraglides, parachutes and swims. "You get a different kind of high when you’re living on the edge. You tend to pay attention to details."
Thus he has wrought iron candleholders with fern designs, metal garden accessories, tables, chairs and wall decor.
This is his first venture into the local market though some of his designs are consigned at Budji Layug’s Be at Home store. His wife Susan says Mike still carries "export orientation." Most of his work is "packable" and sturdy.
"It’s exciting because there are no size or weight limitations now, you don’t hear the word UPS-able or have to do a drop test," Mike says. His company has participated in CITEM exhibits in Paris and Milan as part of Movement 8. For the local market, MCCA came up with a new line totally different from the ones they export.
There were only a few items at the store when we visited and Mike says they’re going to bring in more, mixing small and big furnishings.
Matthew Brill is captivated by travel, particularly that point in the industry’s history when people traveled with trunks so huge you could pack your entire living room in there. Or trunks designed so ingeniously you could convert them into your living room.
This New Yorker, who came to the Philippines when he was 22 years old, exports campaign furniture, traveling trunks and accessories, among others. With one sample maker at the back of his house, he created a whole line of luggage – those old-fashioned Orient Express-Louis Vuitton style suitcases and trunks.
"That’s the way people used to travel when weight and size weren’t an issue," he says. His company, P&B Valises et Compagnie Inc.,at one time made luggage for the antique cars of the Daimler Benz Museum in Stuttgart – suitcases to fit in the trunks of cars like the 1939 Mercedes.
Matthew explains his love for the lifestyle of the old world. "I found an old suitcase that I thought was incredible and tried to reproduce it. We try to be authentically correct, we don’t really create new designs but improvise on the old ones. It’s not just furniture, but things that you associate with memories and personal feelings."
It’s not surprising that this exporter owns and restores vintage 4x4s. After all, everything he makes has a "historical connotation" including old-fashioned golf bags, cricket bats, billiard tables, maharajah chairs, old Dutch prints in leather frames, etc.
His furniture at About Design hark back to the English colonial period in India and Africa. "They would go on a safari and set up tents and furnish them with beautiful wooden trunks, collapsible chairs, beds and everything. Even the magistrates, so they wouldn’t get their feet wet, would be carried across the river in chairs that were held up by long poles."
The influence of travel extends to furnishings not having anything to do with travel, such as wall units for either the den or the kitchen; they have handles and pulls that still look like trunk handles.
Like Mike, Matthew’s pieces in About Design aren’t the things he exports. He makes variations in the material and styling.
He looks around the store and says, "Our work complement each other’s, which makes it a very nice, eclectic, diverse store. Because we’re always creating new things, we’ll always be fresh."
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