Ask a New Yorker: The one and only Tucker Robins. What do you do for a living?
Tucker: I design and build furniture with remote tribal groups around the world.
Ask a New Yorker: Remote tribal groups and furniture. Pray tell?
Tucker: My furniture is from sustainable harvested materials and recycled elements
from agrarian societies creating contemporary forms.
Ask a New Yorker: Name some of the tribal groups.
Tucker: Ogorot, Ifugao, Toraja, Bambelueke, Maya, Kalinga.
Ask a New Yorker: Tell us about this piece.
Tucker: You see many of these groups have now written language so everything
is transferred into form. Symbology, the ancient creation of stories, reminds
people of their elders and of the traditions of people and the forest.
Ask a New Yorker: So in other words, each creation’s design element that
I’m looking at here would have a tribal story behind it. So tell us the
story behind this table.
Tucker: Exactly. This represents mother in an hour glass form. It’s based
upon the mortar, which is the gossip center of the tribes. The men harvest the
grains and bring it home and women will stand around a mortar in the shape of
a woman and exchange gossip and stories.
Ask a New Yorker: Where are these tribes from?
Tucker: We are talking primarily the Philippines, Cameroon, Skrilanka, Indonesia
and Honduras.
Ask a New Yorker: Fantastic. Very conscious of the green I guess.
Tucker: This is salvaged. The tribal groups are picking up behind the road
crews of the trees that are coming down. This work brings the highest yield
to the forest. Because you are paying for the wood and you’re then paying
for the craft of it. So instead of going to fire wood or slash and burn, it
is bringing money directly into the craftsman’s pocket.
Ask a New Yorker: Where are you going next?
Tucker: Brazil.
Ask a New Yorker: Where did you find this jacket?
Tucker: Thai silk. Hand woven.
Ask a New Yorker: Dashing. I’m digging the gold teeth.
Tucker: You’ve got to entertain the tribal groups. They understand gold
of course.
Ask a New Yorker: I just had an impacted wisdom tooth yanked. Do you have a
dentist story?
Tucker: I was in the monastic order and when I left the monastic order with
the first little bit of money that I had, cash, I went to the dentist. I said,
‘Here’s three thousand dollars. I want all the mercury taken out
of my mouth and replaced with gold.
Ask a New Yorker: Excellent. So what is your own favorite creation?
Tucker: Well, in this book that I’m looking at now, I worked with Donna
Karan and her home. This coffee table, right there, I love. I did the dining
room here, too.
Ask a New Yorker: As a world traveler you must have an interesting perspective
on life. Any words of wisdom you would like to share.
Tucker: My biggest concern is for our forest and the people that live within
the forest. We here in America have an idea of a National Parks system where
we put a fence around the forest which protects them. That way works for us.
In the so-called third world you have indigenous people living amongst the forest.
The idea has got to be to work with the people and the forest together to bring
the highest yield to the forest and the people themselves to protect the forest.
We cannot build a fence around it. We have to work with the people and need
to think about employing them, utilizing to the highest possibility, so that
the trees will be replanted and supported.
Ask a New Yorker: What’s your family like?
Tucker: My ancestors started Spalding. My grandmother’s grandmother started
Spalding Sporting Goods. So in 1880 they toured the world teaching the world
to play with balls. Baseball…golf balls. So in that same tradition, I’m
traveling the world and bringing contemporary ideas about shapes and forms and
bringing the ancient shapes and forms to market her in NYC
