Two Questions for William Couig of Furthur Design

A: I grew up just over the border from New York in Connecticut but have been based out of Brooklyn for 25 years now making all of my work out of UrbanGlass in Fort Greene. I took a less traditional route and found my calling in glass after getting a degree in English in college. I spent a year backpacking around the world after graduating and witnessed glassmaking several times on my trip. When I returned to the US and NYC, I discovered UrbanGlass and tried my hand at glass at a weekend workshop. After a few classes, I found a position at a production studio in Hoboken and learned a lot on the job over the following four years. When that shop closed in 2001, I started my own studio practice that I ran out of UrbanGlass and then formed FurthurDesign in 2003. My primary material is blown glass but I also make work out of solid glass, sculpted glass, neon glass and often, varying combinations of them. With lighting we also use a mixture of materials, and finishes, especially with hardware.

A: My main inspiration comes from popular culture and my immediate surroundings. Living in NYC has always provided endless inspiration, but is most obvious in my Skyscraper Series of architectural inspired vessels. All of my work is intended to have a futuristic aesthetic and much of that is grounded in the 70's vision of the future I was raised on in movies like Star Wars and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Then you sprinkle in musical influences from jazz to rock and roll and you can start to see where a lot of my design concepts originate.