furniture {reincarnated}: furniture {incarnated}: MY Ballard Designs

In my past life, I designed furniture, accessories, lighting, wall art, rugs, and miscellaneous home furnishings for Ballard Designs. It was a wonderful experience and there I found my passion for furniture design. I learned about mass production, and construction, and finishes, and out-sourcing, and other random tidbits of knowledge that have proved themselves useful over the past few years. My favorite and most successful design was for an office collection called the Bourdonnais Collection. It was featured on the cover of the catalog and the collection still continues to grow. It was inspired by the Eiffel Tower and similar designs can now be found everywhere from Wal-Mart to High End Retailers.

Below is a quick sample of the CAD drawings I did for the desk. For each project I worked on, I would start with sketches and end up with a set of CADs (construction drawings) to send to the factory, often overseas. Once the factory completed the sample, they would ship it back to Ballard for approval. We would make any last changes and then the mass-production would begin. Getting this produced was definitely a team effort and everyone played such important roles. Each step in the process from seeing the sample for the first time to seeing the final product displayed in the catalog was so exciting!