Meet Tasmanian Furniture Designer Laura McCusker

The Tasmanian furniture maker champions quality in her pared-back pieces.

More than two decades ago, when Laura McCusker was still getting her furniture-making business off the ground, her toddler tried to score some parental attention by peering over her mum’s desk and sinking her tiny teeth into the timber. This was the “over-the-top” desk McCusker had spent countless hours making at the Sturt School for Wood in Mittagong, NSW. “I remember being devastated because there were little dents on the edge of the table,” she says, “but now my daughter’s 23 and the baby milk-teeth marks are my favourite part.”

To McCusker, it’s this kind of emotional attachment that makes a great piece of furniture. “It means it will be treasured and repaired and passed down,” says the 49-year-old. She even tries to encourage that connection by inviting clients to join her via FaceTime when she chooses wood at the timber yard for, say, a Tasmanian Oak dining table. “It establishes the relationship with the object before it exists.”

Raised in Adelaide, educated in Sydney and, since 2003, living in Hobart, McCusker works out of a century-old former apple-packing shed. Creating furniture, she says, is like “productive yoga”, engaging her heart, hands and head. Her work has a Mid-century Modern sensibility that’s oblivious to trends. “Something that’s clean and thoughtful and pared back will have a longer life span.”

Breakthrough moment: Being commissioned to make furniture for Hobart’s Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) in 2010 and, later, a 60-metre table for MONA founder David Walsh’s wedding.

Exhibited at: Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery and MONA, Hobart; Australian Design Centre and Powerhouse Museum, Sydney; Craft Victoria and Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne.

What the experts say: “Lovers of timber cannot fail to be moved by her ability to simulate fragility and to carefully conceal or subtly and surprisingly express perfect joints.” – Robert Stevenson

SEE ALSO: How the Art Scene Is Embracing Tech in All Its Forms