Hasta La Ideas

When I stumbled across Analog Modern, Peter Buley’s line of rustic yet minimal furniture at the Architectural Digest Home Design show earlier this year, I was an instant fan. As the reclaimed wood trend grows ever stronger, it becomes increasingly difficult to find a unique voice in the mass of raw, unfinished beams and repurposed metal fittings, but by narrowing his focus on smaller, one-of-a-kind projects and relying on his years of experience as a craftsman, he’s established himself as a leader of the pack.

Origins
Peter wasn’t always exclusively a furniture maker. After he graduated from the School for International Training (SIT) he spent three years in Asia doing humanitarian aid. He went back to complete his Master’s program in Sri Lanka in the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami. When the two years were nearly complete, however, he and his classmates had to be evacuated due to conflict that erupted around a disagreement over how tsunami aid was being distributed.

Back in the States, Peter worked with a nonprofit that builds wheel-chair accessible tree houses. He continued to hop back and forth from the US to Asia, but ultimately settled in Brooklyn because it “seemed like a really good place to be a furniture maker. I was starting to gravitate towards smaller things. I knew I really liked the detail of furniture and that precision.” He made the move in 2009, but after relaying the cutest meet-story ever he then admitted that moving to New York was only in part because of work but also because his wife was living there. (The condensed version of their story: Peter saw a boarding pass lying on the ground in an airport and handed it to the nearest person, a woman who thought she had lost it during her layover from a thirteen-hour flight from Korea. The two ended up getting seated next to each other on the plane and the rest is history. Awwww.)

Design Ethos
Peter’s overarching aesthetic and design goals are in the name of his business itself. Analog Modern is the perfect encapsulation of what he tries to do: take something old and give it a new life by pairing it with something new. The Dovetail bench, for example, takes the shape of a dovetail joint and translates it into a completely modern leg that supports a treated piece of reclaimed wood.

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