Growing up along the sea-soaked cliffs of Brittany, France, Douglas Werner got a first-hand education in the effects the elements have on alloys of all kinds. How so? Well, by playing on the beach among “the wrecks left behind by maritime history,” of course! His keen eye saw the beauty in that corrosion even then.
But long after he graduated from playing pirate, those weather-beaten scraps of copper, steel, bronze and brass stuck with him. Now, Douglas operates Oblik Studio in Brooklyn and shapes those same metals from his youth into fabulous furniture and lighting. He likes to mix metals, and, like any upstanding citizen, he believes in recycling when he can and sourcing them sustainably.
I visited him in his studio and it was a heavy-metal kind of visit, you could say! The man is obsessed, and you will be too once you take a look at the collection of his gorgeous hand-crafted items. He also has a surprisingly tender way of describing his fellow borough-dwellers, where others almost always default to a reference of the high hipster saturation level. In retrospect, it makes sense- he’s used to seeing beauty in unusual places.
