Christopher Martin delivers first COA lecture of the season

The College of Architecture is excited to announce Christopher Martin, nationally renowned furniture design-maker, will be giving a Godfrey & Roberta Kunzendorf Lecture on Furniture Design titled “Design Tangents; A Story of Exploration and Common Threads” at 4 p.m., October 28, in the Union Swanson Auditorium.

Martin is founder of Christopher Martin Furniture and works as a furniture designer/ maker on commission work and produces a line of small batch furniture pieces for sale online. He also collaborates with traditional artisans in Ghana and India.

Before opening his own business Martin taught furniture design in the Department of Art and Visual Culture at Iowa State University starting in 1999, retiring in 2022 as an emeritus professor.

In 2008 Martin took leave from his teaching position to serve as a U.S. Peace Corps Volunteer in the West African country of Ghana for two years. He was deeply influenced by his experiences there and his research and creative outputs show this.

More recently Martin was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to spend five months in India working with both traditional artisans and modern craftsmen and technicians to develop a series of contemporary furniture pieces that pay reverence to the richness of India’s traditional craft culture.

For this lecture, Martin will give an illustrated tour that will delve into his body of furniture pieces. He will discuss the many sources of inspiration, his fascination with material and process and the progression of his own work.

For questions, email Kerry McCullough-Vondrak at kerry.vondrak@unl.edu.