I got to know them when I was working at a high-end residential firm that had a traditional look to its work, because Boyd serviced that market really well. But they were also starting to put out pieces like the Loop fixture by Deirdre Jordan — which I absolutely love — that felt more modern. Boyd has always had an element of modernism in their engineering — even if there were decorative elements to the designs, the engineering behind the pieces had its own modern language. But lately, they have been shifting from a more traditional aesthetic to more modern takes. They are still highlighting craft, but eliminating some of the adornment.

I cold called them to ask if I could show them some of my designs, and that eventually led to Duet, Spire, Lily and now, Nest. From our discussions, the team there has told me that they like that I have an organic, nature-based perspective without just producing kitschy recreations of nature. Lily is very much inspired by the lily of the valley, but it’s not literal — it doesn’t have frills around the lips of what would be the flower portion or anything like that.

And I love working with them. It’s very conversational. If you look at my collections for them, they each look very different, and I think that’s because they’ve developed based on discussions about what we did on the weekend — a hike, or a movie that someone watched. They don’t tend to give me visual references. Instead, it’s more about exchanging emotional references.

Early on, I think I was very focused on making sure that I was understanding their customers, so Duet is something that looks pretty traditional. I was inspired by Noguchi and the idea of voids, but ultimately the design feels like a classic lantern. On the other hand, Spire was a visual idea that I liked but had felt might not be “Boyd-looking” enough — yet it has ended up outselling other pieces.

I still have a process that I think prevents me from getting too minimal and alienating their core clientele. All my designs tend to start out pretty maximalist. Every piece will have six to eight unique details, even though I know that there would be no way to do all those things — and I wouldn’t want to, because it would look kind of insane. But I leave a design on the wall for a while, and then come back and start to whittle away at the details. Usually I’ll end up with three pretty noticeable details that bring a degree of uniqueness, but are also presented in a more pulled-back way. Boyd is a brand that people go to for the craftsmanship, so I’m very intentional about not trying to eliminate adornment altogether, because those are the things that resonate with traditional designers who are looking for texture and pattern.

Growing up, my mom really loved these beautiful blown glasses that were a wedding gift from her sister. She kept them in the pantry behind our sippy cups, and I always admired the colour and the shape. They were a blue seeded glass, so you could see some bubbling in them, and they looked really organic and craft-made. Over the years, I broke three of the four of them, and every time one would break, I can remember seeing the look on my mom’s face — it was like my first understanding of sadness. So I think from that, I developed this attachment to blown glass and colour in glass that I got to explore with Nest.

I got a funny email from Boyd’s graphic designer when he was working on the layout for some of the literature about the design. Not knowing about that backstory, he wrote to me to say “I realized why there’s something I like about this design” and sent a photo of a glass of Pinot Grigio in a classic wine glass. The shape of Nest isn’t modelled after that, but it references things that are glass blown that anyone can connect to — there’s a certain familiarity to the visual.

In the past, I’d leaned into the idea that if I was designing something organic, then everything would be curved and organic, and if I was designing a pragmatic, mathematical kind of thing, then everything would be angular and really defined. But I’ve stepped away from that, and gotten into this idea of playing with curves and angles as contrasting elements that can be forced together.

Originally with Nest when I just had the two shapes, it didn’t feel “Boyd enough” to me. So I looked at a lot of classic master glasswork, which would have these striations or cuts applied to it. Often they would read very decorative, but I liked the concept of it because it gave one extra defining feature to separate the two pieces. The cold work cuts are calling back to a classic glass blowing technique, but they’re very mathematically placed, too. The outer shade is angular, and the inner shade is just curved — so they’re these inherently sparring visuals. I was trying to see if there was a way to bring the more defined, angular nature of the outer form to the interior form.

Sticking to my maximalist overkill approach, I started with 28 striations that would have had to be needle-thin. Then came the conversations about production. We really wanted this to be a mouth-blown piece — but did we want the whole thing blown straight into a mold that had those details applied? That would take away some of the hand-crafted aspect. What we settled on was that, we’ll blow the form, and then have the striations cut. But because that’s done by the human hand, there’s a maximum amount that you can apply before the fail rate of the piece becomes too risky. So that cut the number of striations from 28 to 16.

Then Steve Parcher, the incredible glass blower that does these pieces in Oakland, was concerned about the point at the top, where all the striations come together. We were chewing away a lot of material. In the end, we settled on nine striations. There’s a push and pull in the process. It doesn’t take away from the form, and it makes it so that this could actually be built. Watching Steve make those precise cold work cuts is pretty special

I had started sketching this shape — one form nested within another form — with my calligraphy pen. At first I wasn’t sure if it was going to be a light, or a vase, but I was kind of obsessed with it. Once I decided that it was going to become a light, I knew I wanted to work to visually erase the source of the light.

Initially, we had an LED tube inside, but the problem with that was that it became too much of a third form, which cluttered the design. What we were able to do is to have a module right at the top of the fixture, where the colour is the richest and it’s the most obscured because you get a lot of refraction from the angular and curved pieces coming into close proximity. That refraction line became the point where if something was nestled behind there, it would almost vanish. Boyd likes to do everything in brass, but that wouldn’t work for this fixture because of heat, so we had to pivot to an aluminum module that works as a heat sink. And it just vanishes essentially — all you can see is what looks like a tiny halo outputting light.

We also have a super thin silicone washer to prevent the two pieces of glass from touching, because otherwise any friction or chipping during an earthquake could cause the whole thing to shatter. And then the top cap basically tightens and compresses everything together, and a tube fastens it and goes up to the canopy.

No. It’s tough to find an opportunity to work with use colourful glass in the industrial design space. You see more of it in glass art, but otherwise, everybody wants things in white or smoke. So I think Boyd took a risk on having colour as part of the core offering, but they were willing to do it to get people excited about the concept. Naturally, I was like, it has to be the blue. It’s not actually the same blue — my mom’s glasses were a cobalt that, in the context of this light, would overpower the form, but it’s a steel blue. And so far, that blue has been the colour that has resonated the most with people so far. It’s a bit of a statement, but still a bit of colour therapy. I could see someone in a mid-century space in California wanting to reflect the ocean, but also someone in a New England home with classic millwork and then this bright blue fixture.

The sconce stem actually evolved from a floor lamp version that didn’t move ahead. We ended up using a chamfer detail that I’d developed for this three-prong base for the sconce arm. And then we’ve also come up with a system so you can make a chandelier configuration. I would love to see a massive array of like 16 of these in a big communal space — whether it’s a space of worship or just a community center. It draws the eye upwards, and there’s something spiritual about that.

It’s a sad state of affairs to be in a trade war. There’s a certain optimistic idea of it functioning as a unifying moment for Canadians. I try not to think of things as strictly border-based, but I would love for people to buy more Canadian things. We’re a great country — we definitely have our issues, but we’re broadly trying to get better.

That said, currently, coming out of the school system here, there aren’t places to house your designs the way that there would be in Europe. Sadly, at least in my experience as a designer based here, most Canadian companies are completely uninterested in working with you. So your option becomes trying to be novel to people outside the country — finding great people like Boyd who want to work with a friendly Canadian — or trying to produce your own things in Canada. That’s an option, but it wasn’t an option for me because it would be incredibly expensive, incredibly high risk, and not offer a lot of support. People have done it — there are very cool brands that have pulled it off. But for most industrial designers working in Canada, our work is for companies outside of Canada. I know that might be a bit of a shame, and maybe it will change, but I don’t know. It’s expensive to get industry off the ground, and Canada is severely lacking in terms of production at home.

Ultimately, I’m lucky that the global design industry is pretty liberal and inclusive. The majority of the people that I’m working with outside of Canada think tariffs are a terrible idea, and want this to be over. For me, it’s just important to look at the companies that are making things and what they stand for.