The Champagne Stool began life at my birthday celebration. I twisted off the wire cage of a champagne bottle and the perfection of the little cork restrainer as a stool struck me. The six images below highlight the development process from initial drawings to a NEW YORK TIMES article and an installation view at the Bubble Lounge in Manhattan.

The finished patented product a 30 inch high stool with vinyl upholstered foam seat.

Domaine Chandon of Moet Chandon agreed to allow royalty free use of their logo.



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This sepia wash drawing was created as an initial product proposal.

A digital delineation used for the initial prototype stools.

NEW YORK TIMES article covering a competition at the NY Design Center and featuring a photo of me with the stool.
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Champage Stools located in the Bubble Lounge in Tribeca, New York City.

This article in Food Arts Magazine is about the Bubble Lounge and praises the Champagne Stool.
Client: Hudson River Inlay

Concept and Design: James Herman

Project: develop stunning furniture traditional in style to position Hudson River Inlay in a high end market.



Hudson River Inlay had begun to expand their pictorial wood inlay into furniture. The company wanted to feature their fine craftsmanship in dramatic pieces which would position them in a traditional high end market.

My concept was to develop a design based on the Herter Brothers (19th C.) famous armoire in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This design coincided with a large exhibition at the museum of the Herter Brothers work. The synergy of the museum show's publicity and HRI's furniture introductions garnered much publicity and sales for the inlay company.

 
As Product Manager with Hunt Manufacturing Company I was challenged to create new products; the fabric screen printing kit and the brayer seen below are successful products still actively marketed today.
 

My idea for a fabric screen printing kit took a lot of team work to create a new product using existing technology, current products, repackaging, repositioning the kit in the existing market and introducing the product to a new market.

Hunt Manufacturing Company's best known brand is Speedball, but the company was unable to achieve the market share it desired with its' screen printing materials which were all sold as separate products. My proposal was to develop a kit to sell to both fine art and craft markets and specifically developed to print on fabric. Produced exclusively in house with existing technologies. This kit is still being sold after 30 years.

The Hunt Speedball brayer was developed by the engineering group at Hunt. My input was primarily the look, feel and packaging of this basic hand tool. The brayer is used to hand roll ink, but most of the existing brayers were made of wire and difficult to clean. The Hunt brayer was innovative because of its durable plastic construction and easy cleaning due to the removable roller. The product is still widely sold in art, craft and education markets.