Bold Of the Architect | Custom Furniture Minneapolis

Bold furniture begins with bold thinking. Our custom furniture in Minneapolis is approached through an architectural lens, where proportion, structure, and upholstery craftsmanship shape each design.

Every custom furniture project teaches you something. This one taught me I do not have a 14-foot wingspan. 

We recently partnered with a Minnesota fixture company on a dining installation in Florida — three upholstered seating alcoves, each 12 feet tall with a domed top. Imagine a restaurant booth that unionized with the building. 

We like fixture companies because they bring problems normal furniture never has. Chairs sit on floors. Sofas mind their business. Fixture work asks questions like, what if a pitched back met a hemisphere and we all pretended that was reasonable? 

On paper it sounded simple: “A pitched back needs to meet a dome.” 

In reality that sentence should require a structural engineer and a therapist. 

The dome was fiberglass — perfectly curved and absolutely unwilling to compromise. Upholstery is flexible… right up until you need it to behave like solid architecture. To make the transition work, we had to redesign the internal structure so the lines flowed visually while the foam still relaxed naturally. No flats, no puckers, no “good enough from ten feet away,” because restaurant lighting turns ten feet into a microscope. 

I built a lip using thin boards matched exactly to the dome thickness so the wood back could die cleanly into fiberglass. What I learned: fiberglass tolerances are more of a personality than a measurement. After a lot of adjustment, then readjustment, and then pretending the first two didn’t happen; perfect. 

Then came fabric. Deep convex backs. Embroidered textile. 28-inch repeat. $200 a yard. Nothing wakes up your survival instincts faster than cutting into that. 

We had to sew relief into the panels just to let the material exist in three dimensions. And once upholstery started, it was steam, pull, steam again, pull harder, repeated until the fabric

accepted its new life choices. Every wrinkle would spotlight itself across the dining room, so mistakes weren’t an option unless we wanted a very expensive teaching moment. 

At one point I was hanging backward off the structure trying to tension material while questioning both my reach and my career path. I’m convinced commercial upholsterers should come standard with telescoping arms. 

The real challenge wasn’t sewing or patterning, it was scale. A 12-foot piece requires ladders, platforms, creative posture, and occasionally wondering if OSHA has guidance on stapling while partially airborne. If they ever add a section on “lowering yourself from furniture to finish a seam,” we’ll be compliant. 

Then we had to ship them from Minnesota to Florida, which means engineering for arrival, not just appearance. A project isn’t done when it looks good in the shop, it’s done when it survives forklifts, highways, and humidity without developing a new personality. 

My dad’s rule in this trade: don’t say no, just figure it out. That philosophy built our company. It also builds furniture taller than most ceilings. 

This is why we enjoy working with fixture companies. They don’t ask for products, they bring ideas that don’t exist yet. We solve them, invent processes, and push upholstery into places it technically has no reason to go. And in the end a guest leans back into a giant curved alcove and never thinks about geometry, physics, steam burns, or ladder acrobatics. 

Which means we did it right. 

If you’ve got something unusual in mind, we’re in. Ideally within normal human reach. But if not, I’ll start stretching now.  If you're exploring custom furniture in Minneapolis, you can learn more about our process and designer collections