Jacob Riggle is a furniture designer based at the foot of the Cascade mountains in Bend, Oregon.

He built his first furniture piece in 2010. Ten years later, notebooks full of ideas and creative energy ready to unleash, he decided it was finally time to bring his ideas off of the page—it was time to build!

For the past 10+ years Jacob has been working as a graphic designer, while at the same time sketching, sometimes building, always dreaming of one day bringing his furniture pieces into the world.

Pandemic Reflection

In 2020, partly as a product of lockdowns in response to the pandemic, but mostly spurred on by the birth of his daughter and the self-reflection that came with becoming a parent, he realized it was time to move past his perfectionism and fear that his work isn’t good enough—to open up and actually show his work.

The Beginning

Jacob grew up in a small mountain town of around 1400 people amongst the ponderosa pine, douglas fir, and granite boulders of western Montana. He couldn’t have imagined a better place to explore and let his imagination run free. The forts he built during these years, and the endless hours playing with Legos laid the groundwork for his future design aspirations.

Formal Education

At 18, Jacob went to Los Angeles for college where he studied engineering for 3 years before realizing he didn’t want to design bridges, roads, dams, or sewer systems and switched over to graphic design. It was during this time that he began exploring form in the 3-dimensional space, and in 2010 built his first furniture piece: the Piixel Corner Shelf. This was a major moment of self-discovery. Up until then, he hadn’t even considered furniture as something he could care about. The only furniture he experienced up until that point was–in his opinion–strictly utilitarian. With the Piixel, he wanted to make functional art. He had no idea what a big world it would open his eyes to.

After graduating in 2010, he worked a lot of odd jobs; everything from door to door sales to working on PowerPoint presentations for fast food chains. For the most part he was focused on graphic design, but continued to fill his notebooks with furniture ideas, and occasionally would be commissioned by friends to build one-off pieces, like The Crate.

A Peek Into The Retail Side of Furniture

In 2014, he took another step into the furniture world when he was hired by A+R, a new modern furnishings, lighting and décor retailer based in LA. Here he worked as the Digital Design Manager, a role that solidified his love for furniture, as he was exposed to so many unique pieces from all over the world.

Bend, Oregon

In 2016, Jacob married the love of his life, moved out of LA and up to beautiful Bend, Oregon. That brings us up to the present, where he spends his workdays managing the website and graphic design content for the City of Bend and at night and on weekends—while his daughter is asleep—he works on his furniture.

Today

At this moment in time (spring of 2022), he is currently preparing to show his work in Milan, Italy at SaloneSatellite, a showcase for emerging young designers, part of the Salone del Mobile.Milano (Milan Furniture Fair).

With each of my pieces, I aim to isolate and amplify a particular design element. With the Piixel collection, I took the concept of the raster—the digital representation of natural shapes rendered using millions of tiny squares–out of the digital context, reinterpreting it in wood. My Sllat pieces were born out of an idea to design a collection of patio furniture entirely out of slats—the arms, the seat, and the back in the case of the Sllat Patio Chair and Sofa. With the Truuss, I started by designing a bed frame with a classic truss structure, but instead of steel, I chose hardwoods. It’s meant to be a juxtaposition of the industrial form, with softer, natural, more elevated materials.

I don’t know for sure–this is something I’ve spent a lot of time trying to figure out. I believe it’s an inherent desire as a human to be generative, to build and create, and to leave one’s mark. It all came into sharper focus for me after I became a dad. I realized I have a limited amount of time each day, and a finite amount of time on earth, so I need to make the most of it! I need to follow my dreams. I realized I cannot settle for what’s easy and safe. So, after about 10 years from the time I built my first furniture piece, and many half-hearted starts, I finally decided once and for all to take the plunge. I’m confronting my issues with my own self-worth.

Why furniture?

I want to create something that has never existed. I want to create art that is functional—well, physically functional. Art plays many important functional roles—mentally, psychologically, and emotionally. I aim to design furniture pieces that similarly elicit an emotional response, that make you stop and think. It’s the interactive potential inherent in furniture that really draws me to this medium. The audience, the user—including myself—not only can appreciate the aesthetics of the piece, but also sit on it, or sleep on it, or display their books, albums, and important trinkets on it. I want to express pieces of my soul through my work.

Digging Deeper

I think of the primitive tools our early ancestors created millions of years ago, the cave paintings at Lascaux, the pyramids, hieroglyphics, art, jewelry, and furniture of ancient Egypt and all of the technological advancements humans have made over the millenia to improve their lives.

So I would say that on a deep level, I create to connect with humanity and our collective history. I see myself as a single point in the endless lineage of humankind and life itself. For me, at this moment in time, I’m connecting through the furniture I design, to the thousand generations that came before me and the infinite number that will come after I’m gone.