Nicholas Bijan Pourfard has “always built things”, says the 33-year-old San Diego-based woodworker. “I started small,” he says on Zoom, sitting on the sunny terrace of his home. “Spoons, dice and skate ramps for me and my friends when I was into skateboarding. Then I got injured and was out of action for six months. I felt the pressure to do something with my time, so I began creating guitars from retired skateboards.”
A video posted to YouTube documenting the making process went viral. Today, his company Prisma Guitars specialises in striking, psychedelic-looking instruments (from $2,500), made from seven colour-dyed plies of hard rock maple pressed together. “They’re completely one of a kind,” he says.
It was another injury that pushed his foray into furniture, however: he cut off two of his fingers in a woodworking accident. “They stitched them back on, but for a while I didn’t think I’d ever work again.” The recovery period afforded him time to hone new designs, develop the manufacturing side of the business and expand into furniture and lighting, which he started selling a few years ago after a lucky lunch meeting in New York.
“I’d been making chairs and other objects privately,” he recalls, “and was sitting at a communal table in Chinatown, when I started chatting about a new lamp design to the woman next to me. She happened be a designer called Christie Ward, who was working for Soho House. She ordered four of five prototypes on the spot.” The ceramic Mushroom lamp ($850) is now one of his best-sellers; also popular is the Tall Boy chair ($1,650) crafted from sustainable hardwoods and leather.
And Prada has given him its stamp of approval – while filming an eyewear campaign featuring his guitars at his home, the brand also focused on some early lamp and chair prototypes they saw there. He has furnished the LA offices of fast-casual restaurant chain Sweetgreen (the Erewhon of bowl food) with his Anything stackable swivel-back chairs ($850) and collaborated with luxury retailer SSENSE. Meanwhile, Prisma Guitars thrives, with a line of guitar accessories including limited-edition pickups (from $205).
His latest project is perhaps his most personal, derived from a 15-year-old pile of Iranian dirt. “My father was born in Iran,” he says. “Years ago, he bought land on Kish Island [a resort in the Persian Gulf] and loved the quality of the earth there. He wanted to start a mud-mask company and managed to ship a couple of palettes back to the States.” Yet the project was abandoned due to logistics issues.
One day, Pourfard discovered the insect-ridden earth under some tarp in his father’s garage. “He had tried to get rid of it during one of his spring-cleaning bursts. We have this creek by our house and I found him throwing it in there, but something made me intervene. I just had this feeling that we could do something with it.”
Pourfard tested several pieces in a kiln to discover they were ceramic. The result is a beautiful 24 x 30 x 10-inch red-wood wall cabinet, its façade and interior drawers embellished with clay. He even roped in another member of the family, his 90-year-old paternal grandfather, to help mould the clay into fittings for its door. As his grandfather – who was visiting from Iran – doesn’t speak English, it was a pretty straightforward design process: “The pieces needed to be simple enough to communicate through hand gestures.” The pair settled on a pebble shape, with each piece bearing one of their thumbprints.
Pourfard is now toying with the idea of a dresser and a contemporary take on a Persian bone box, which is traditionally used for keepsakes. It’s become a great way to connect with his heritage. “I’ve never been to Iran,” he says, “and it’s funny that I only touched the earth my father collected there back here in California. This was my attempt at trying to understand myself from afar.” The pieces turned out exactly as he wanted. “Then there is the fact I was able to immortalise my relationship with my grandpa in this piece. I have his literal thumbprint,” he concludes. “That’s pretty cool.”
@nbijanpourfard, nbijan.design