furniture manufacturer and designer

Jordi Estape has been featured in leading industry publications such as Archtectural Digest and Florida design among others. Please check back as we update this page.

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Design Trends for New Millennium

Friday, July 23, 1999
By MAXINE GINSBERG, Home Editor

Design-world titans have decreed that stainless steel is the prime metal with which to enter the new millennium. And previously inert home furnishings will be on the move. There were other surprises on view at the Design Center of the Americas (DCOTA), in Dania, when the twin-towered Mecca for design industry professionals hosted a two-day glimpse into the future called Design 2000 - Blueprint for the Future.

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Two designers on hand for the event are taking the advent of the millennium in stride.

Mario Buatta, known as the Prince of Chintz, was in a melancholy mood as he predicted the new millennium would bring the end of interior design as it has been.

"The design schools are limiting their teaching to the twentieth century," said Buatta, who gave the keynote presentation on Saturday. "Design students are no longer getting the exposure to and benefit of what came before. They are producing bits-and-pieces, fleamarket decorating with not much imagination."

New York-based Buatta recalled the trips to Europe that design students used to take to study classic architecture. He noted how valuable is the study of past masters and lamented the meager frame of reference possessed by the current crop of designers and students. "They don't even know who Billy Baldwin was," he said. He expressed sadness that current society has provided few role models for people to emulate in dress and interior design.

But Buatta is working on his third generation of design customers, the youngest of whom do want to emulate the good taste of their parents and grandparents, but with modern variations, he said.

Since furniture designer Jordi Estape's bread and butter is classic design, adapting to new-age trends are not on his agenda. A graduate of art school in Barcelona and business school in California, the San Diego-based artist/entrepreneur specializes in large-scale, carved furniture with original finishes.

Estape said he originated the four-column bed to counter the ubiquity of canopies and four-posters. A staff of 250 artisans execute his patented designs, done in birch and alder, which he manufactures in Mexico, shows at High Point, N.C., and ships all over the United States, Europe, Canada and the Mid-East.

High tech is not a factor in a manufacturing process that relies more on Old World techniques than modern advances, he said.

"I look to Greek, Egyptian and other Mediterranean cultures for inspiration for my designs," he said.

Yet there's one concession to the modern age. The large-scale headboards and footboards have been engineered to disconnect from the hefty end columns for easier delivery to condominiums.

Although DCOTA is primarily a trade-only merchandise facility, members of the public can arrange to discuss their design projects with professional designers in the Designer On Call program who will accompany them to appropriate showrooms.