This is an interview I conducted with the designers of TEB Interiors. It was published in the May-June 2014 issue of Satellite Magazine in Los Angeles. The issue can be read online here: http://issuu.com/satellite-mag/docs/may-jun_2014_art_design_issue_no_xx?e=1641344/7738435 and I have attached the raw text and screen grabs of how the article is laid out in the magazine.
Talking TEB
By Aeryn Pfaff
Terry Edward Briceland and Matthew Adams make up TEB Interiors: a Toronto based furniture company. They work out of Design Republic, a popular furniture store in the hip Queen West area, which is where we met to talk some TEB.
Aeryn: Can you recall why you became designers?
Matthew: I’ve always liked unique stuff, and I love the reaction of someone saying, “where did you get that?” and being able to say “I made it”. We’re both self taught.
Terry: It’s nice to make something new. If we want something, we figure out how to make it ourselves. I wanted to be able to make things that are different, edgy and cool. I want people to know distinctively that it’s by us. There are tattoo artists, and strippers, drag queens and cool people out there; I just wanted to be able to make home stuff for them.
What happened was, we were working ourselves at home and we kept seeing this store called Design Republic with all these cool things in the window. So I just came in and said “Hey we make cool pillows do you wanna see them and sell them in the store”, and next thing you know they were saying “Well why don’t you just move in.”
A: What would you say are your main influences when conceiving a piece of work?
M: The fabric would be the seed. We would say “That would be really cool as an ottoman in this shape, or in that shape, with nail heads or tufting”. The world around me is inspirational as well. I think a lot of industrial stuff is very inspirational for us. Trying to combine elements of refinement with elements of unfinished, or old and rotting.
T: If I’m just coming in on the streetcar and I see someone’s bag for instance and I like those colors and the way somebody’s put something together, I re-imagine that and take the feeling that I got and turn it into a bed. Or an ottoman. Or a pillow. Things I see on a TV, I’ll like the color combinations or the textures and turn that into something.
A: How did you get to be known for your TEB pillows?
T: Pillows are so much easier to be really creative with, because they’re like a blank canvas. I have a note app in my phone and it’s stacked with lists of hundreds and hundreds of things that will all of a sudden pop into my head. Color combinations. The Tin man from the wizard of Oz. Anything I can think of, I’ll try to remember to turn that into a pillow somehow.
A lot of times we’ll even think of somebody we like and try to make a pillow, not that looks like them, but that feels like them. That started because Matt taught himself how to silk screen. And we thought, “Let’s try silk screening on pillows”. The first one we tried was the Union Jack.
M: I had made a Union Jack pillow. My wife’s a teacher and her school does an auction where people donate things to be auctioned and so we put together some pillows and one of them happened to be a Union Jack pillow. It was a combination of a few images I put together, like a stamp and skulls and a crown; kind of edgy. It wasn’t just a piece of fabric we have, we cut the pieces and sewed them all together. The blue is a separate piece and the reds’ a separate piece.
T: They’re all lined with a purple fabric. Purple is kind of our trademark color; like Christian Louboutin’s red soles on the shoes, we’re purple. We have purple zippers, purple lining, every pillow has a little purple loop in the corner and on the inside it’s lined with purple fabric.
With that purple loop sometimes we’ll hang things on it. We have this pillow called Naughty Girl. It’s a pillow of a girl grabbing her ass in fishnets and she’s got handcuffs on, so before this one is done we’ll attach little handcuffs to the loop so you can unlock her handcuffs.
A: What comes first – the materials or the design idea?
M: It changes. Sometimes if Terry sees something on his way into work then you have to source all the other stuff out, but there’s no one formula for us. It’s very organic. An idea is gonna hit you anytime, anywhere and you just have to be open to it.
Terry motions to his phone.
T: These are my notes. All these are inspirational ideas that I, one day need to get on and need to make pillows or something out of and check them off the list. Like here, “Mindy’s hound’s-tooth dress”. I was watching that show The Mindy Project. She had a dress on with big hound’s-tooth checks on it and it was sequined, and I thought that could make an awesome pillow or a bed or something.
A: How do you choose your materials?
T: When it comes to our own stuff we’re a bit more picky. But a lot of customers worry too much about “what type of fabric should I use for my curtains?”. We try as much as we can to just use anything you want. If you want a chair upholstered in silk, just do it! It looks amazing! We try not to limit ourselves.
M: Or limit our customers. We try to educate them. You can use anything. There’s no rule except for actual physical limitations. If you like it, then it’s right.
A: What part of the creative process excites you the most?
T: The beginning and the end. The middle blows.
M: There’s two parts. The beginning when you’re super excited, the idea pops in your head and you start to form it and you start to visualize what you want it to turn into. It’s really exciting to put that image together. And then you have to start to figure it all out. Then when you’re done, and you step back and it’s made-
T: And it works.
M: That’s really exciting.
T: And other people love it and it sells. That feels fucking awesome.
M: For me figuring out some of the technical aspects to building something, in a nerdy kind of way is cool, but as soon as you’re done it, you’ve spent so much time with it, then you’re done it and you want to move onto the next thing.
A: What do you regard as the greatest success of your career to date?
T: We’ve made some stuff for celebrities. We’ve made pillows for Khloe Kardashian, Elton John, Lawrence Fishburne came in and bought some of our pillows. Guillermo Del Torro bought some pillows from here. I made Kat Von D a pillow. She’s a big Beethoven fan, so we copied the star tattoos on her eyes and put them on Beethoven’s face on a pillow and there was a raccoon tail hanging on it and it was ripped with leopard skin with spikes on it. It was awesome.
A: What’s next for TEB interiors?
M: We’re always expanding. We want to expand our audience. We have lots of customers now so we know people with our tastes are out there. We just want more of them to find us.
Aeryn Pfaff's Journalism Portfolio 