Industrial designer launches furniture designs crafted from aircraft-grade aluminum plate

May 2015 - Consulting detective Sherlock Holmes once exclaimed to Watson, “I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose.”

If you ask Vancouver, British Columbia’s Matt Muldoon, aka Knuckles, what’s in his “attic,” he’ll claim there is a menagerie of Dr. Seuss characters, street artist Banksy and The Rat Fink. It’s these influences that feed an obsession when it comes to fitting, welding, torching, shrinking, stretching, turning and machining metal.

Muldoon cites a backyard machine shop as ground zero for his passion. He established Knuckles Industries in 2007. His custom industrial designs soon caught on, leading him to introduce a line of handcrafted furniture this year. Fabricated with aircraft-grade 6061 ½-inch-thick aluminum plate with stainless steel bolt connections, the 6061 Series includes 10 designs limited to a run of 200 pieces each. Every item has a hand-stamped brass certificate of authenticity. 

‘Up all night welding’

Like his alias and company name, Muldoon came to industrial design quite by accident. “Even as a kid I was always interested in making things—cutting something apart and then welding it back together.” Of his alter ego, “Everyone knows me as Knuckles, a nickname I think came from my coach, but it stuck,” Muldoon says. So much so that friends encouraged him to use the moniker for his company.

Formal training provided Muldoon with a solid foundation in metal fabricating. “You learn the parameters of what tools and materials can do,” he says. “That knowledge gave me the freedom to go off road. Before I knew it, I was staying up all night welding. I was obsessed.”

In 2013, his work in one-off pieces caught the attention of a Calgary company. “They approached me about designing and building a one-of-a-kind boardroom table for their new facility,” he recalls. “It was nerve wracking. I started with dirty hands in a fab shop so I’ve never seen myself as an artist. I had an idea of how the table would look but I also wanted the piece to live up to the concept they had envisioned.”

It took Muldoon 16-hour days over two months to complete the 7-foot-long, 5-foot-wide table. 

“It was an awkward shape due to the configuration of their boardroom,” he says. “So I used a number of artistic touches to give the design a sense of continuity.”

Muldoon rendered the company’s logo in copper and used it as an inlay in the table’s otherwise grade 6061 aluminum surface. He hand-buffed 2,800 decorative copper rivets and used stainless steel bolts to assemble the 27-piece table. The success of the project proved to be a springboard for Muldoon’s new furniture line.

“I had never before released something that was not a one-off,” he says. Keeping the production runs small is both practical and a built-in guarantee that Muldoon’s love affair with metal stays fresh. “I have so many things I want to make that the use of limited runs just made the most sense.”

His affinity for aluminum rests in its high strength-to-weight ratio and in the surface finishes he can achieve. “I anodize each piece,” he says. “The electrochemical process delivers a flawless, satin-soft finish. If you were to use steel you would have to paint it using a multi-step process that would not be comparable.”

Feedback

Public response to Knuckles Industries’ new line—available since March 15—are split down the middle. “People either love it or hate it,” he says. “I welcome the feedback but the only opinions I’m truly concerned with are those of the individuals who have purchased from me.”

Although he isn’t one to follow strict rules, Muldoon does have one directive. “People may not like my designs, but they can never examine my work and say that a piece was poorly made.”

“I carry notebooks with me everywhere because I’m constantly doodling, drawing and making design adjustments,” he notes. “I draw on a napkin and hand my dimensions to the individual who produces my renderings. We go back and forth until I’m satisfied with it.” 

Muldoon’s current line is an amalgam of design and fabrication processes. “I don’t want to pigeon-hole myself out of custom work because I’m still very interested in doing that. But because time is becoming more of a commodity, a custom project has to be one that I’m interested in doing as well.”

The next inspiration may or may not be furniture. He is toying with the idea of an upholstered line that would include mixed media with an aluminum frame. But like Sherlock Holmes, Muldoon holds fast to his single-minded methodology. “I need to make sure I finish all my steps before I go to the next thing.” MM