Barlas Baylar and The Press

Chronicling the Vision and its Growth.

Famed New York furniture designer Barlas Baylar is a media favorite for his unique vision of the transformative powers of furnishing that blend natural elements with contemporary aesthetic sensibilities to create works that are functional while otherworldly, practical yet dreamlike.  Barlas Baylar’s designs have been featured in numerous publications, both popular and trade-specific in nature, from Woodshop News and Interior Design to O magazine and the New York Times.  Coverage is always favorable, with interesting factoids interspersed.  For example, did you know that Baylar’s petrified wood end tables are 250 million years old?

Baylar is known as a “design nomad,” as City Magazine coins the term, a designer fed up with the sameness of appearance that comes from mass production who trots the globe in search of distinctive raw materials that will help provide a completely different look to their works.  Baylar, however, is the kind of committed conservationist who goes so far as to ensure the environmental sustainability of his materials first-hand, even to the point of seeking the official permission of foreign governments in cases of necessary imports.  Otherwise, the wood he uses is all domestically sourced of arbor salvaged from wind and storm-related damage.  Using reclaimed wood was traditionally associated with camping grounds and the like, but Baylar has become famous for managing to integrate such elements into modern interiors for minimalism and sleekness that is warm and inviting.

New York Spaces magazine gushes over his B Base Tables and their oxidized iron supports.  Elle Decor raves that Baylar’s Tate Benches are made with an exceptionally stark sculptural quality, with their exaggerated grain, uneven cut, and deeply mocha color.  The foreign press, too, believes in Baylar’s vision of modern organic furniture: Die Zeit observes that his Organic Bed is “a monument against the throwaway society” by recycling lumber into new works.  Indeed, Barlas Baylar’s design philosophy has become an international phenomenon in itself, with the prolific produce of his bustling New York City workshop in high demand by the most exclusive of hotels and the most high-profile of celebrity residences.

And what of the designer himself?  Little is given, despite the broad coverage and the even wider range of positive opinions on his work.  Only the most basic biographical details are provided out of modesty and a personal desire for anonymity, preferring to let his art speak in his stead.  For his perspective is such that there is no distinction between the artist, the art, and art itself – nor any between art and life itself.  A life devoted to art, an art breathing new life into old forms: this is the unanimous verdict of the global press on Barlas Baylar’s singular achievements.