5 New Brunswick designs heading to Brooklyn, Toronto

Pursuing the hottest contemporary Maritime crafts, art and home furnishings has been an obsession for industrial designer Geof Ramsay.

"We have this interesting convergence of styles here," he said. "There's the history of the French, British, American and Indigenous influences. Then there's the history of boat-building we have here."

Ramsay, 33, grew up in Moncton and lives in Saint John. In 2013, he was named one of Canada's top 10 emerging designers by Azure Magazine. In 2015, he snagged best prototype for his Hex Chair at the Toronto Interior Design Show.

He was selected to represent New Brunswick at Outside the Box, a partnership between Toronto Design Offsite and a huge event in NYC called Wanted Design.

"They've chosen designers from certain cities to show some of the local flavour, the vibe of what their city is all about," he said. The catch: all the goods all have to fit in a banker's box.

Most of the cities chosen for Outside the Box were "big names like San Francisco, Boston, Montreal and Philadelphia," Ramsay said. "We're adding Saint John to the list."

He photographed each piece in a white minimalist setting. "I love having white space that allows each of the objects to stand out," he said.

Check out Ramsay's photos of the sleek collection, which features both his work and that of fellow New Brunswick artisans Darren Emenau, Jeneca Klausen, Doris-Ann Savoie and Marie-Hélène Morell.

A vase by Darren Emenau, a potter who lives along the rural shores of the Saint John River and uses locally dug clays, potash, silica, shale and granite for his glazes.

Ramsay chose Emenau's work because "it reflects the landscape here," he said. "This feels like you just pulled it out of the ground. It's a rugged, sublime beauty."

A stair basket by Doris-Ann Savoie, a traditional basket weaver from Moncton. Savoie works primarily in a rattan fibre called reed, to which she usually adds earthy, primitive dyes.

"I really wanted to incorporate craft in this collection, because that's part of the Maritimes: this sense of heritage and working with your hands," said Ramsay. He asked Savoie to create this piece in monochromatic blue as a "modern interpretation of that traditional craft."

"The shape might look modern, but it's actually a traditional shape," said Ramsay. "It's L-shape [pictured holding books] is made to sit on a stair."

Ramsay's mugs are inspired "by the mooring of a boat, and how that feels good in your hand," said Ramsay. "It's about function and familiarity When you hold that mug in your hand, it feels like an old diner mug — like home, if you get my sense. I like to find that balance between the familiar and the modern, and re-imagining the icons of a place."

A necklace by Saint John artisan Jeneca Klausen. Klausen's hand-wrought jewelry borrows from the forms of nature, embracing asymmetry in materials including quartz, charred pyrite, raw crystals, moonstone, bone, and silver.

The necklace, titled Fog Talisman, is part of "a series of faces she's doing," Ramsay said. "It's bringing in the full mythological side of this place. It's polished, but its beauty is in its authenticity and its natural form. It's got the hand of the artist in it, which I really like. You can see where she cut and molded it."

A hand-braided rug by Saint Johner Marie-Hélène Morell, a fibre artist and the editor of the art blog and magazine CreatedHere.

Ramsay was inspired to include Morell's work after seeing her exhibition Tapestory — a public, interactive weaving project — during the Third Shift art night in Saint John, 

A rug Morell had underneath her seat caught Ramsay's eye. It was "monochrome, with a speckled effect," he said. "I got her to do one with a more traditional twist: a rag rug with a speckled, interesting, fun colour. One of the things that I really wanted to push with this exhibit was the idea of fun: we're not stuffy." The white sneakers belong to Ramsay's girlfriend, architect Melissa Wakefield.

Ramsay's collection of New Brunswick artists will be displayed at Outside the Box, which runs at the Artport Gallery in the Harbourfront Centre in Toronto from Jan. 13-28, then at WantedDesign Brookyln, part of NYCxDESIGN week, from May 17-20.

The idea behind the collection, Ramsay said, is to show that New Brunswickers "have a voice, and designers working here and doing cool stuff," he said. "The hope is that Toronto and Brooklyn sees that there's something cool about that esthetic — and displaced Maritimers see what we're doing here at home."