#HTE

High-Quality, Innovative Knockdown Fasteners That Can Open Up Design Possibilities

If your goal is to be a furniture designer/builder, here’s one scenario you probably haven’t envisioned. Let’s say you design and finish building your beautiful piece in your shop in, I dunno, Cleveland. But the buyer lives in California. Well, guess who’s getting in the truck and going to Home Depot to buy some 2x4s and CDX and will then spend a weekend building a custom crate to hold your masterpiece. Yes, you.

Shipping bulky furniture pieces is a pain in the neck, and it would undoubtedly be easier if your piece was flatpacked. The problem is that flatpack designs are often associated with chintzy cam-lock connectors, cheap quality and basic, boring design. So I was excited to find a company at Holz-Handwerk that is trying to change this perception by designing better hardware.

Scheulenberg’s mission is to develop and sell “quality furniture fittings and connecting systems” made from nickel- or zinc-plated steel. Managing Director Georg Scheulenberg hopes that by producing rock-solid connections, he can woo designers who’d otherwise dismiss knockdown fasteners. Here’s an example of one of their systems, the XS:

(While the wood in the video is rendered as having end grain, I imagine these are designed for use in engineered woods; I couldn’t spot any provision for wood movement.)

In order to open up design possibilities, the company produces connectors that step outside of the 90-degree box, like this version or this version that can be used at various angles:

As an example, the following furniture piece is joined with Scheulenberg connectors:

The company will ship worldwide—"One of my best customers is in Vietnam,“ Scheulenberg said—and business is apparently booming, with several recent years of tremendous growth. But as Scheulenberg confided to me in the booth, he’s somewhat dismayed at the level of designs utilizing his connectors, as he feels they’re not bold enough, and are still too similar to typical flatpack designs.

When he heard I was an editor for a design publication, he sat me down in his booth, with the almost desperate look of a man who wants to talk about design but has been trapped with people that don’t care about design.

"People need to think, ‘better design,’” he said, pulling out a huge binder. He flipped through it and showed me this photo:

“You know what that is?” he asked.

“A Thonet,” I said.

“The Thonet No. 14 chair. Designed 1859, maybe the most famous chair in the world. Look how it has been designed. You see here they can fit 36 of this chairs into one crate just one square meter.

"Look at the finished chair. Does that look like flatpack?” he said. “No! It is beautiful!” He flipped through the binder and showed me another photo:

“Does that look like flatpack?” he asked. “No! You never guess. The designer makes a beautiful chair. Because of a good connection system and good planning, he can design it to fit into this crate, too. Twenty-four chairs in one crate. Designed over 70 years ago. And what do we design today?”

What Scheulenberg desperately wants is a forward-thinking designer to understand the possibilities their fasteners offer and create something unique using them.

“Yes, business is good,” he said, somewhat glumly, “even great.” He rattled off some off-the-record figures that I found astonishing.

“We will continue to grow and innovate, that’s not the problem. We know how to design and produce good connection systems, that’s also not the problem,” he told me.

“What we need is A DESIGNER.”

Are you that designer? Delve into Scheulenberg’s offerings here.

More from Core77’s coverage of this year’s Holz-Handwerk Show!