An Interview with
Blaise Gaston

Blaise is one of the winners of our 37th Annual Design Competition and a professional woodworker and furniture maker in Earlysville, VA. He owns his own company called Blaise Gaston Inc. and has been designing furniture for over 50 years. A long-time customer of Mockett, we were so excited to sit down with him and hear firsthand where his idea came from and why he finally decided to enter our competition!

Doug Mockett: What is your background in design? What led you to our Annual Design Competition?

Blaise Gaston: I got woodworking lessons for Christmas when I was nine years old, and I went to a boarding school where crafts were very important. I went to The School of American Crafts, which is a four-year furniture design program in Rochester, NY, and graduated in 1975. I’ve been doing professional furniture making, cabinet making, and millwork since then.

I’ve known of Doug Mockett since the company started, and I’ve been buying grommets from you guys for a long time. I can’t remember how I first heard about the contest, but I’ve known about it forever though this is the first time that it seemed like I had something that might be worth entering.

DM: Tell us a little about your design. What was the inspiration behind it?

BG: I’ve designed metal fitting for furniture forever, so if I need something that’s not available, I’ve just been making them myself for many years. I was looking back at drawings and saw I first started drawing this fitting in 2018, so I’ve been thinking about it for a while. A tabletop with legs attached to it costs a fortune to ship. If you can remove the legs easily, you can ship them in a smaller box and save the cost of freight. I ship lots of stuff, so I wanted to find a cheaper way to do it.

There are certainly plenty of fittings on the market, but they’re less attractive. I wanted to come up with a design that added to the design rather than subtracted from it so someone would want to have it there and want to see.

DM: You’ve created so many beautiful pieces of furniture over the years. Do you have a favorite?

BG: There’s a coffee table called Helios that I’ve made about 300 of. It’s a great seller and is complicated and fun to make. Lelia’s Dresser is another favorite. It was on the cover of one of the Furniture Society’s books and shown at a few shows in Memphis and Chicago, and at both shows, people came up to me and said it was the most amazing piece of furniture they’d ever seen. So, I’m quite fond of that piece… it really moves people.

Congratulations to Blaise for creating a functional, attractive design. We are so excited to get to work on bringing this to market! To view his full interview, click here.

For more information on our Annual Design Competition or to see how you can enter, click below! We are now accepting entries for our 38th installment!