Michael Iannone designs and builds eco-friendly furniture

It wasn't until midway through his senior year at Rowan University that Michael Iannone discovered woodworking. "I immediately had success with it," he says, whereas illustration, which he had studied for three years, had always been a struggle. Soon after graduating in 2000 he founded Iannone Design, known for furniture that mixes sustainable materials with uncluttered, midcentury lines and bold, nature-inspired graphics.

The firm wasn't founded on sustainability, but after a few years of watching his eco-friendly pieces attract more attention and sales, Iannone decided to fold it into his mission. "A lot of the materials, like kirei [pressed boards made from stalks of sorghum, a by-product of rice farming] and bamboo plywood, are really beautiful," says Iannone. "That was a big factor, too."

The Rowan grad gained national attention when he introduced the Dandelion Console in 2006. Its decoration - a cutout in white laminate that depicts dandelion heads in negative - highlights his unusual use of materials. The striated texture of the kirei board peeking out from beneath the cutout is as frenetic as the bee that appears to have just landed on one of the dandelions. All of that organic action is anchored by the smooth, man-made laminate and the cabinet's quiet silhouette.

In a real-life made-for-reality-TV scenario, Iannone came up with the dandelion and the bee only a week and a half before he was meant to debut the piece at the annual International Contemporary Furniture Fair in New York. He knew he wanted to add a graphic, but nothing was flowing. He was so ready for lightning to strike that he sketched the motif in two hours once it came to him. The piece won rave reviews from Metropolitan Home, the New York Times, and Domino magazine - and Iannone was on the map.

Some of the designer's pieces start with the desire to use a specific material. Right now he's pondering how to make a side table and maybe a vessel from some massive blocks of cork. "I've always wanted to build 100 percent cork furniture," he says.

Other pieces, such as his Shaker series, originate with a design. He makes the Shaken Dresser using either reclaimed chestnut or reclaimed snow-fence boards from Wyoming that have been weathered to a rugged silver.

When Iannone was starting out and eco-friendly design was just blowing up, he had to seek out these kinds of sustainable materials. Now sales reps frequently bring new options to him. Still, Iannone recognizes that the materials have to remain secondary. "I think most customers buy what they like the look of," he says, "so you always have to focus on design and function."

Iannone is part of a woodworking co-op located in a former railcar depot in Kensington where he shares space and access to several large machines with six other woodworkers. He was enticed to move his studio there from East Falls by the two loading docks and a two-year rent rebate through the city's Empowerment Zone initiative.

"Pieces with graphics get a better response online. That's important now that so much selling happens there. You need to think about how a piece is going to translate in a photo."

"My design vocabulary shifted a little when we first started and our retailers began to influence our decisions. Woodworkers are directly or indirectly competing with mass-produced furniture, but our pieces are more labor-intensive and that makes them more expensive. I had to figure out how to lower labor costs to do good design at a reasonable price."

Custom versions of Iannone's Wooly Media Cabinet will be on sale through Anthropologie next year. "We designed two new pieces - an armoire and a nightstand - based on the original piece." His work can currently be found at Minima

(118 N. Third St.).

Pencil

and Paper:

"I get my basic ideas by sketching on paper,

but before

we build anything, there's a computer drawing."

"I haven't sat down and sketched for awhile, and I'm getting that itch to come up with new stuff. The International Contemporary Furniture Fair [in May] is always the impetus." Further into the future, Iannone dreams of building a studio within biking distance of his Glassboro home.