1.22.2021 | DIGS.NET 19
OS ANGELES NATIVE TAYLOR DONSKER IS, LIKE THE
sculptural furnishings and modern industrial pieces
he designs and fabricates in his vast Santa Monica
workshop, something of a paradox, a woodworker
whose primary instinct is to go against the grain.
Donsker is reluctant to call himself a woodworker at all, at
least at this stage, maybe "10 or 20 years from now," he says.
Given what he has accomplished thus far, one considers with
excitement what mastery at his hands might eventually mean.
Unconstrained by the strictures of a formal woodworking
background frees the nondoctrinaire Donsker to use dissimilar
materials in new and interesting ways, resulting in ingenious
original work with a rich material language. "Furniture is really
a smaller form of architecture," says Donsker, who turned to
woodworking after architecture school. In his workshop are
slabs of the California walnut he favors for its variations of color
and characteristics. "It's not too dense, or too soft, and the
grain is always surprising," he says. While delicately assembled,
his pieces, fashioned in the California Modern mold, are not
demure; they're insistent and assertive. Including an entire
collection that came from a majestic, 100-year-old Bastogne
walnut tree—the third largest in California—that he tried hard
to save. Learning it would be removed (an arduous three-day
process), Donsker used its wood for a whole series of furnishings
so that its magnificence would live on. He approaches the
material, and his work with it, as an almost spiritual partner.
"The whole world slows down. There's focus. Rhythm and ritual.
You just forget everything," he says. taylordonsker.com
L
P R O F I L E | TAY LO R D O N S K E R
TOP TO BOTTOM:
CORSET DINING TABLE,
CARTESIAN END TABLE,
STRIKE SLIP BENCH
TAYLOR DONSKER WORKS WITH SLABS OF CALIFORNIA WALNUT IN HIS STUDIO.
Back to Nature
With his hand-honed designs upending conventional
notions of craft, contemporary artist-craftsman
Taylor Donsker works wonders in California timber.
W R I T T E N B Y J E N N T H O R N T O N
A
R
C
H
I
T
E
C
T
U
R
E
+
D
E
S
I
G
N
PHOTOS:
JACK
STRUTZ
(PORTRAITS);
ALL
OTHERS,
TAYLOR
DONSKER
