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Nicholas Bijan Pourfard “has always built things,” says the 33 -year carpentry of Woodworker, based in San Diego. “I started with little,” he says in Zoom, sitting on the sunny terrace of his house. “Spoons, dice and skating ramps for me and my friends when I was in the skate. Then I was injured and I was out of action for six months. I felt the pressure of doing something with my time, so I began to create guitars from removed skates. “
A video posted on YouTube that documented the manufacturing process went viral. Today, your company Prism guitars It specializes in surprising and psychedelic -looking instruments (of $ 2,500), made of seven layers of hard rock arce pressed. “They are completely unique,” he says.
However, it was another injury that pushed his foray into furniture: he cut two of his fingers into a carpentry accident. “They sewed them, but for a while I didn’t think I would never work again.” The recovery period gave him time to improve new designs, develop the business manufacturing side and expand in furniture and lighting, which began selling a few years after a kind of lunch in New York.
“I had been doing chairs and other objects in private,” he recalls, “and was sitting at a community table in Chinatown, when I began to chat about a new lamp design for the woman who is next to me. She happened as a designer named Christie Ward, who worked for Soho House. The ceramic fungal lamp ($ 850) is now one of its best selling; Popular is also the Tall Boy Chair ($ 1,650) elaborated from hard wood and sustainable leather.
And Prada has given him his approval stamp, while filming a glasses campaign with his guitars at his home, the brand also focused on some early prototypes of lamps and chairs they saw there. He has provided the Los Angeles offices of the Returitors and Casual Sweetgreen restaurant chain (the Erewhon of Bowl Food) with its rotating return chairs Aything Stackable ($ 850) and collaborated with a luxury retailer Ssense. Meanwhile, Prisma Guitars Prospera, with a line of guitar accessories that includes limited editing pills (from $ 205).
His last project is perhaps the most personal, derived from a lot of Iranian land, 15 years. “My father was born in Iran,” he says. “Years ago, he bought land on Kish Island [a resort in the Persian Gulf] And I loved the quality of the land there. I wanted to start a clay masks company and managed to send a couple of palettes back to the United States. “However, the project was abandoned due to logistics problems.
One day, Pourfard discovered the land full of insects under a canvas in his father’s garage. “He had tried to get rid of him during one of his spring cleaning explosions. We have this stream next to our house and I found it by throwing it there, but something made me intervene. I only had the feeling that we could do something with that. ”
Pourfard tried several pieces in an oven to discover that they were ceramic. The result is a beautiful red wooden cabinet of 24 x 30 x 10 inches, its facade and interior drawers adorned with clay. He even agreed to another family member, his 90 -year -old paternal grandfather, to help shape the clay in accessories for his door. As his grandfather, who was visiting from Iran, does not speak English, was a fairly simple design process: “The pieces had to be simple enough to communicate through gestures with their hands.” The couple settled in a guijarro form, with each piece with one of their fingerprints.
Pourfard is now playing with the idea of a dressing table and a contemporary version of a Persian box of bones, which is traditionally used for memories. It has become an excellent way to connect with your inheritance. “I’ve never been in Iran,” he says, “and it is curious that I have only touched the land that my father picked up there in California. This was my attempt to try to understand me from afar.” The pieces were exactly as I wanted. “Then there is the fact that I could immortalize my relationship with my grandfather in this piece. I have its literal thumb mark, ”he concludes. “That’s great”.