Kalon Studios' Slow Design | The Panafold Issue 01
Photo by Austin Leis for The Panafold
“The way we approach our work is by really just trying to be the change we want to see. It’s as simple—and complex—as that. And if you're doing that as a company, you're presenting your work and saying “This is the change we want to see.” We think a lot about the concept of “good design.” Can something truly be good design if it’s bad for the planet, wildlife, local communities, and workers? What if the perceived value of design was bound to these considerations?”
Last year, Michaele Simmering and Johann Pauwen, co-founders of Los Angeles-based furniture design studio, Kalon, decided to photograph some of their most-loved pieces for a series called “With Age.” They’d been creating heirloom-quality contemporary furniture handcrafted by teams of master artisans with a focus on natural materials for over 15 years, and they wanted to check in on how things were looking. Simmering and Pauwen, who are partners in life as well as business, also wanted to give prospective customers an honest look at how Kalon pieces—most of which are constructed from domestic hardwoods, without any chemical processing or synthetic finishes—age over time, and what they mean when they say that their beauty deepens through use. “We live in a world obsessed with new things,” says Simmering. “A brand new leather bag is lovely, but a piece of properly aged leather, with all its wear and caramel tones, is infinitely more beautiful. It tells a story. Wood is exactly the same.”
This type of longtermism is core to how Kalon does business. The brand borrows its name from an ancient Greek concept of ideal beauty that is equal parts aesthetic and moral. When an object is “kalon,” it is beautiful because there is an inherent goodness to it. “It’s why we bring such consideration to all stages of our practice and every decision we make,” says Simmering. “Our intent is to imbue our pieces with both material and spiritual integrity.”
I sat down with Simmering and Pauwen in Kalon’s Atwater Village showroom to chat about design as a catalyst for change, the sense of freedom engendered by their home city of Los Angeles, and more.