Ask a New Yorker: Where were you born and raised?
Laurie: I was born in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn and lived there for the first three years of my life. Then my parents moved to Long Island to a house with a picket fence. I grew up in Freeport, Long Island until I was seventeen. Then I left to see the world.
Ask a New Yorker: What do you do?
Laurie: Well, right now I’m doing furniture design. It’s something I started to think about over ten years ago, and then I finally got the courage in 2006 to get my feet wet at the trade shows. I shared a group booth and started to show my first two pieces that I ever did. It was very exciting because it got really good reviews from the get go. The following years were big. I added three new pieces to my collection, each one being very different from the other. I used different materials. Every single piece got a lot of press. I did the Tete-a-Tete rocker. (For more of Laurie’s work see http://www.lauriebeckerman.com/)
Ask a New Yorker: Is it your signature piece?
Laurie: I would say yes, because people really recognize it. There’s actually another Tete-a-Tete Rocker. I did this informal partnership with DuPont. They actually put in the money for the material. They really helped me in a lot of ways.
Ask a New Yorker: Let’s go sit in the Tete-a-Tete Rocker. So how did this all come about designing furniture?
Laurie: It really was a process because my background was architecture, and I didn’t really think about furniture. I mean I really did not think in a million years I’d be doing this. It was really by accident. I had an old boyfriend who was a master stone carver at the Cathedral Saint John the Devine. I was working in the architecture shop and he was in the stone yard. I loved going into the stone yard. I would carve a lot. He was French. I actually followed him to France. While we we’re in France, southern France which is beautiful, at one of his workshops I did this little tiny table out of stone. And everybody was like, ‘wow that’s good’ So I thought maybe I could get that sculpture feeling and put it into furniture design and make it both sculptural and functional. I use architecture and marry it with my sculptural inclinations,
Ask a New Yorker: Was there anything else that motivated you to take this leap of faith into furniture design?
Laurie: My father died. That was major. It jolted me. I’m going to cry. We were very close. It was life changing in that in made me feel my mortality. It was like now or never moment. I just was pushed over the edge and now I had a little extra money so, I betted on myself. I went full force.
Ask a New Yorker: What’s your favorite color?
Laurie: I have a lot of favorite colors. If you take the color like orange I don’t want it for a toothbrush but I want it for maybe for an orange resin table. I like it as a lollipop too.
Ask a New Yorker: Are you reading any books?
Laurie: Well, right now I’m not because I’m going through my design phase. I kind of cloister myself a little bit. At night before I go to sleep I don’t like to read news. I focus and think about work and design.
Ask a New Yorker: What’s your favorite restaurant in NYC?
Laurie: Definitely, The Four Seasons. I have some great memories.
Ask a New Yorker: I love the duck!
Laurie: I love everything. I love the service. I remember I went once with my family for my birthday. We sat in the pool room by the pool. It was so fun. I got dressed up to the nines.
Ask a New Yorker: Everyone looks like someone else. Who do people say you look like?
Laurie: Actually my cousin once told me that I reminded him of Barbra Hershey. My father was always mistaken for Anthony Quinn and he kind of really liked that or Leonard Bernstein. My father was very handsome and my mother was gorgeous. My dad had a very big personality and he would go along with it and pretend that he was Anthony Quinn. My mother looked like Ava Gardner. They were quite the couple. I have fond memories of them on the dance floor. They were great ballroom dancers. My mom use to go to Roseland. That was her thing. She used to go and dance with all kinds of good partners.
Ask a New Yorker: Do you like to dance?
Laurie: Yea (laughs) I think I got the dancing gene.
Ask a New Yorker: Thank you Laurie for your time and good luck designing!
