The Designer Behind Café Mars’s Bright Wooden Chairs

When Brianna Nichole Love was a child in San Antonio, she tried to convince her parents to let her keep the bees in the courtyard (the answer was not immediate). But, not discouraged, she obtained an internship at the local zoo as the first cycle – and continued to study the bees anyway. It is therefore not surprising that one of the first furniture she ever designed was the Honeycomb coffee table.

The table, with its nested hexagonal wooden columns base, turned out to be the first of many parts it would make from the material. The 28 -year -old started to work with Wood in Wellesley, where she studied architecture. But it was not his academic program that presented it to the equipment as much as the school guards, who had an installation to make wood on the campus. LOVE wanted to make spoons for friends, and the crew delivered the wood that she needed directly at her door.

Brianna Nichole Love.
Photo: Elisheva Gavra

After obtaining her university degree and worked in a variety of jobs, she launched APOTROES studio In 2021 in his hometown of San Antonio. She admits that she did not know what she was doing, but her stay in the world of venture capital had shown her that most people who start projects do not do it either. Since he moved to New York for higher education in the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia University in 2021, she launched some other pieces, including a taboret and incense holders, as well as Chairs for restaurants like Café Mars. Now she is in her last mandate, working on a thesis on The effect of Private Equity on housing While continuing to design new parts for apotroes studio.

The latest LOVE collection, The Annie Dining Set, is inspired by traditional African combs and masks in her grandmother’s lounge. It was not only their appearance, but a desire to “create something that would allow me to sit with it during a meal”. The Annie ensemble has 12 chairs, each designed to look like something that could literally cover hair. As she says, “I really liked the concept of a comb chair which is actually a type of comb – throwing this typology of existing design on his head and being more literal with him.”

Photo: Brianna Love

Photo: Brianna Love

During a trip with the design spaces used by farmers in Colombia, Love joined a coffee farmer called Carlitos, who was interested in beekeeping. She worked with him to improve her hives and add more native bees species, and the project has become something much greater, with love presenting other members of the beekeeping community. A few months later, when she cut a honeycomb during a hotel breakfast in Aspen, the idea of ​​a table came to her. She made a few sketches, returned to the writing and the photos she had taken in Colombia, and a few years later, in 2021, she finished the table in honeycomb – a table on several levels that resembles her homonym. “I thought I was going to sell a ton,” she said. “I didn’t know I didn’t know how.” But after other designers and design writers, she has a better idea of ​​the way to launch her business. It was not a deluge of sales, as she had initially imagined, but it gave her the confidence to continue.

The Presidents of Phobos at Café Mars in Brooklyn.
Photo: Brianna Love

A few months after having moved to New York for higher education, LOVE reconnected with Chef Paul d’Avino, who supported some artists and craftsmen to build his new restaurant, Café Mars. Love had encountered Avino by chance a few years earlier in Boston, after loading his way in a dinner with him and Top chef J. David Zilber during a book speech. “I think I just said a lot of really incredible things to David and he said to herself:” Yeah, this girl should come to dine, “she said, laughing.

After coming to Love’s Solo Show in the City, Avino asked her to make a dishes from the oyster ceramics on which she worked, which she made from a mixture of crushed oyster shells and other materials. But she felt that she was not far enough in the development of the material to commit. He had seen some of his chairs in the show, so they agreed that she should rather design seats for the restaurant – a set of eight chairs. After a few lasting stops and starts, a concussion, and anxiety surrounding a project of this size and this scale, LOVE landed on a design that melted the bright colors of the restaurant with features – there is a slight descending slope towards the seat so that it is comfortable for a quiet multi -way dinner. The chairs are made from solid beech, and the legs are painted in a personalized hot pink paint that attracts attention to the U -shaped rear legs and the corrugated legs at the front. “I remember that when I made the final prototype of the chair, people said to themselves:” What are these legs made? ” Because they are so brilliant and so pink, people could not believe that they were wood. The process was a reprieve for love itself, allowing it to rely on the conception of something “a little less serious”. The project also won a Brooklyn Wine Bar commission Lise + Vito.

Photo: Elisheva Gavra

All the chairs in the Annie collection draw a kind of organic Afrofuturism, but each piece also has its own look and its own story. “President No. 5 is a question of bubbles,” says Love. Inspired by a comb that had a similar look, it uses cutouts and a negative space to create the appearance of bubbles that rise from the chair. “I wanted to make a light chair that felt a little little practical,” she shared. “The idea of ​​wooden bubbles is also interesting because it is contradictory; wood is not really light or transparent.” Due to its delicate nature, it took love, some tests to get the right chair, balancing a surreal look with functionality.

Photo: Elisheva Gavra

“The key part of it is the repetition of the circles that form the scallop,” explains Love. This chair also crossed a series of overhaul. Love wanted to add a 3D element to the president, but realized that he was not really conducive to sit comfortably. She then thought of adding elements to the legs, but by mistake and experimentation, she came to a smaller and rationalized look. “I loved the idea of ​​having a background for my back, but I didn’t feel robust. So I reduced it back and reversed the part I wanted to float in the frame. ”

Photo: Elisheva Gavra

The most traditional of the collection is President No. 8, but it did not start this way. The initial plan for the chair was to cover it in a series of engravings, but love considered how boring it would be to clean. She therefore added a zigzag element to the silhouette for a similar look, inspired by two separate combs. “Since all the combs are handmade, I wanted to evoke the imperfect nature of the chairs which are a mixture of hand and machined. So the imperfect element and zigzagging are the key parts of these chairs, ”she says.