Page 129 - The Book For Men Fall/Winter 2023

But, of course, he did: the material takes centre stage in all his designs. And the way Otter talks about it — with immense, often awestruck admiration — borders on the obsessive. “It’s the grain, the growth patterns, the annual rings, the colour. It begs to be sculpted and polished and shaped. I love the smell of it. It goes quite deep.” Growing up, Otter’s parents instilled in him a respect for trees and a sense of responsibility to care for them. They were some of the first landowners in the area to implement a forestry plan and the way they lived taught him how to approach wood ethically. Because of this, it’s become very important to him that his furniture lasts for a long time. He brings up an old saying from the Shakers, a nearly extinct egalitarian Christian sect from England: “Whatever you make from a tree should last for as long as it takes for another tree to grow in its place.” Which means, if it takes a century for a tree to grow, your chair needs to last at least 100 years. “That’s not greenwashing,” he remarks. “The Shakers really lived that way. And if we all lived that way, the earth would probably look a bit different.”
In the early 2000s, Otter decided to try turning his interest in furni- ture-making into a business, opening a small workshop behind his home in Halifax. He worked there until moving to Ireland with his wife in 2017, where he joined the renowned Joseph Walsh Studio. Here, experimental, ambitious projects continue to stretch him to and beyond his professional limits. At home, he tinkers in his workshop alongside his daughter, who has recently taken an interest in jewellery-making. “Without forcing anything,” Otter says, “I hope that one day we might work together in a design practice. She certainly has an aptitude for it.”
When Timberland reached out to Otter seeking to collaborate, the footwear
brand asked him to completely take the reins on the project and create what- ever he wanted. It was a designer’s dream. He spent months “thinking about a hurricane and meditating on what it does,” while looking at pictures of Fiona’s aftermath. He came across a photo of a piece of metal that the wind had blown against a tree so forcefully that it wrapped around the trunk.
This idea of a material being powerfully imprinted with an object’s outline became the foundation of the chair. Otter took thick saddle leather, soaked it, sculpted it, and dried it so it retained its shape. He bent it in a way that, when placed onto the chair’s wooden frame to create the seat, looks as if it was thrown into place by a storm’s heavy winds. The leather is dyed a bright blue and hand-stitched with burnt orange thread — hues deliberately chosen to reflect the lively spirit of the region’s people. The armback curves forward in a fluid, natural motion, and ends with sharp details that look a little like antlers. The legs, angled slightly backward, give the chair a sense of motion. On top of that, it is made from the wood of a Northern Red Oak tree downed in the hurricane. On the chair’s back, you’ll find hand-carved GPS coordinates of exactly where it fell.
Fittingly, Otter decided to call the chair Made From Fiona. The name rings true in two ways: literally, in terms of the wood; and metaphorically, in terms of how it captures the resilient, vibrant character of the Nova Scotians. “The premise of the chair was ‘outside is the hurricane, inside we are calm,’” says Otter. A storm, he says, can be a terrifying experience, but if you know that you’ll be able to make it out, that your people will be there for you and you can rebuild, the fear doesn’t totally take over. Know this and there’s a calm to be found amidst the danger — like the eye in the centre of a raging hurricane.
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