Meet Alex Geriner, maker behind Doorman Designs.
Alex makes reclaimed wood furniture from architectural salvage found in New Orleans and the Gulf South. Born and raised in southern Louisiana, he was intrigued by furniture and design and founded Doorman Designs four years after graduating from college in Mississippi.
Why did you turn to your handmade craft and business?
I started building furniture on a whim. I moved to New Orleans right after college and found this great old home built in the late 1800s. My crummy dorm room furniture from college just wouldn’t do anymore so I decided to build myself a headboard from an old door I salvaged from a home flooded in Hurricane Katrina. I inlaid the panels with decorative metal ceiling tins to give it a different look. A friend saw it wanted one for herself. From there I continued making headboards and eventually with the help of my dad, started building coffee tables, lamps, and larger, more complex pieces. I learned quickly that there’s a huge demand for handmade pieces that have a story behind them. People crave originality and appreciate that my work comes from one of the most authentic places in the world-New Orleans.
What inspires your craft?
I’m inspired by two different styles from two very different style periods-the Victorian era (1880-1910) and modern contemporary design (1950-present) I love to take a beautiful old piece of wood or architectural salvage that from another time and give it new life in the form of a coffee table, dresser, bed etc. The patina, flaws, and scars of the past, pair really well with clean, simple, modern lines.
What are benefits & challenges of being a handmade artisan?
Benefits:
The world is my oyster on any given day! My job forces me to find inspiration anywhere I look! Nature, architecture, the culture of my city is very inspiring
Makers/Artisans are forcing a positive difference in the way people shop, and curate their lives. I’m a part of a movement that supports the arts and brings new life and value to middle class buyers.
I’m able to design and build items that I’m really proud of and represent both mine and my client’s personality.
Challenges:
It’s hard! Everyday there’s a different mountain of problems to tackle.
Pressuring yourself to be the very best, designing something that others will appreciate, and then building that design to the utmost high quality standards that you know how.
The fear of not knowing what may lie ahead. I never know what to expect during any given week but luckily everything always seems to work out okay.
Describe the process behind the production of your craft.
Typically an inspiration comes to me out of nowhere when I’m driving down the road, jogging in the morning, or showering. After that I start to generalize the look or feel I want the end piece to evoke. Next I sketch it out, and start to walk myself and the team through the logistics of how to properly build it. As we start building a new piece it’ll get tweaked and revamped several times over . We may change the color, redesign the legs, or add a different design element that we initially overlooked.
Do you have a favorite memory surrounding your craft, company, and customers?
What a hard question to answer! I’ve never asked myself this. When I first started out 6 years ago, I had a 9-5 job. At 5 o’clock I was out the door and rushing home to work in the backyard of my apartment building. I lived on the 2nd floor so I’d run extension cords out the windows and down the sides to hook up my saws and tools. I had this deep burning fire within me to keep at this new “hobby”. It’s a fire that’s still very much there. Sometimes I forget about it and just get bogged down in the daily grind of work. When I stop and think about how much I’ve grown from that backyard it makes the fire well up even stronger.
A lot of my furniture is shipped all over the country and world so I don’t get to see people’s reactions when it arrives. However, I get to talk on the phone to clients in different places. Often times they’ll share the style of home they live in, where they work, and how they plan to use the furniture. I’m a very visual minded person and love to envision their living room, or bedroom. I also like to think about the conversations people have while sitting at a dining room table I’ve built, or while they lay in bed reading. I know it’s just furniture but it becomes part of my life and then goes on to live in someone else’s life.
Do you have any advice for other artisans?
I absolutely believe that whatever you put your focus on is what will come true. So every night before I go to bed I have an alarm that goes off at 10 pm. I set this alarm to remind myself of at least 3 things I did right that day. I recap the day and give myself credit for an obstacle I overcame, a tough decision made, or a piece of furniture that came out just right.
As artists, positive focus towards ourselves is crucial. We’re harder on ourselves than anyone else. Some days the only thing I did right was just make it through to bed time and that’s okay.
Sometimes every little victory counts.
