Brooklyn's Progress
April/May 2007

BY CHLOE MARIN

Daniel Moyer, owner of DANIEL MOYER DESIGN & FABRICATION, creates fine furniture from local hardwoods. One day he saw surfboards in his tabletops, and began a venture creating one-of-a-kind high-art skateboards from the fancy hardwood scraps from his furniture business. The company will make its BKLYN DESIGNS™ debut at the fifth anniversary show in DUMBO, May 11 – 23, 2007. The Morgan Avenue furniture designer and builder sat down with us for an interview.

How did DANIEL MOYER DESIGN & FABRICATION get started?
My uncles were marioneteers, the Luft Brothers out of Wernersville, Pennsylvania. Jimmy was the mechanical creator and Johnny was the wood carver. Their shop was both a wonderful and a horrible place full of indescribable magic, the smell was of wood and oil, and a hint of fear. My father is an engineer – every piece, every improvement in our family's home is a product of his design and manufacture. It was only natural that some of this rubbed off. For the past twenty-five years I’ve studied and taught music extensively, but during that time I have been turning out a continuous line of developmental furniture based on filling my family's needs and solving my own space problems.

What brought you to Brooklyn?
The L train, seriously. I had a shop in the East Village a block from my house, but it wasn't even large enough for my tools. The psychological move was huge, but Brooklyn is the best! It's not all that much more affordable anymore, but it is ALIVE in a way like nowhere else.

What type of products do you offer?
My portfolio consists largely of fine hardwood tables and chairs with a recent move into storage pieces, armoires and displays. Reclaimed-stock garden pieces are also on one of the burners, as are a handful of upholstered pieces. Custom work within my genre is welcome. The aesthetic is functional whimsy. My designs are distillations of ancient Asia, 1960's cartoons, the farmhouse chic, pipe and plank scaffolding...everything that catches my eye; that's the whimsy. Creating something intuitive and practical that combines disparate elements into a seemingly simple and cohesive whole – that’s my life craft.

What is FUNKINFUNCTION?
FUNKINFUNCTION is the scrap-bin-skateboard sister company to DANIEL MOYER DESIGN & FABRICATION. In the course of making a piece of wooden furniture a fair amount of trimmings are produced. This is the funk. It's pretty small stuff, but some of it is long and thin and just right for assembling into long thin skateboards. This is the function. The same vertical lamination I use in my table and chair tops achieves in the wooden longboard a really nice balance of strength and responsive flex. The beautiful patterning of 1960's era surfboards is my artistic goal.

So why skateboards?
My shop's at the top of the Nassau Avenue hill in Kosciusko-Greenpoint and the B48 bus is always leaving five minutes before I get there... I guess that was the inspiration for the original FUNKINFUNCTION skateboard.

And you use all scrap wood?
In this industry we’re all very intent on green practice. To begin with, I use small-mill, locally harvested hardwood for my furniture fabrication (no energy wasted in long haul transportation, fancy processing and kiln-drying). Making skateboards from the scrap is even greener, and using other makers' scrap is the greenest. Longboard skateboarding as a transportation alternative is just plain groovy.

The wood is beautiful – who’s buying them?
They're positioned as haute couture transportation for big girls and boys, sidewalk surf-style for grown-up riders, signed and numbered tops in limited production for grown-up collectors.

Sounds expensive. Any bargains?
Of course – buy a table and I'll throw in a skateboard to match.

Daniel Morgan can be reached at 917-301-2551, or at danielmoyerdesign@nyc.rr.com. Please visit the Web sites http://www.danielmoyerdesign.com/ and http://www.funkinfunction.com/. DANIEL MOYER DESIGN & FABRICATION is located on Morgan Ave. in Williamsburg and has been plying his craft.