Design gone to the dogsLocal designer wags his tail after gaining recognition with his piece for pampered pets
Shelley Fralic, Vancouver Sun
Published: Friday, May 23, 2008
It's one thing to graduate from the University of B.C.'s school of architecture, as Glenn Ross did in 2001, but it's another entirely to establish a niche in the Metro Vancouver design world and then make a living at it.
So when Ross found himself, or rather his work, featured in Architectural Digest's Great Design Issue, on newsstands earlier this month, he sensed his career might be turning that all-important corner.
The venerated magazine's nod to Ross's talent -- his sleek bentwood WoWo Dog Pod shares editorial space on page 78 with the Porsche Carrera and Gio Ponti Italian porcelain -- comes just as he's moving his company, Vurv Design, out of a rented garage and into a new industrial space in Port Coquitlam.
If the future looks bright, it was somewhat foggier back at UBC, until Ross took a class on furniture design that was part of the architecture program.
It was there he discovered an affinity for working with wood.
"I always had passion and interest in design, and that's what got me going in that direction."
After graduation, he took the "scenic route," designing architectural models for a Japanese exhibition, a job that gave him enough money to kickstart his Vurv Design firm.
He credits much of his growing success to happenstance, including finding a vacuum press, which bends wood, along with a table saw and an assortment of other basic woodworking tools at an auction, and "if it wasn't for that moment, I wouldn't be where I am now."
He started producing his designs in 2002, working out of a New Westminster garage, creating custom minimalist modern furniture of handcrafted wood, including platform beds, desks and kitchen and bathroom cabinets.
He worked on commission, with some of his work juried at a local wood cooperative, and although he was busy, he wasn't exactly stuffing bundles of cash under his mattress.
"I really like the design process and doing custom work, but it's very difficult to make a living at it," says Ross, who is now 40, married to a school teacher and father of two daughters.
And then along came Oliver, the family's German shepherd-blue heeler cross, a big dog with a big appetite.
"It was one of those epiphanies, staring at that ugly pet feeder," Ross now says, referring to Oliver's food dish and all the crusty grossness and mucky floor gunk left behind when a big dog sticks his snout into a pile of Alpo in the corner of the kitchen.
Sensing there might be a market for a pet food dish not quite so hard to look at, he designed and built a stylish raised feeder fashioned out of bamboo, maple, cherry and wenge veneer, as well as hammered aluminum. The feeders come in a variety of sizes, with stainless steel bowls.
And, this being the place where everything goes to the dogs, Metro Vancouverites lapped them up, to the degree that Vurv's output today is exclusively for four-legged customers and their indulgent owners, or as Ross says, "the young urban crowd that has dogs instead of kids."
There are five pieces in the WoWo pet collection, and a new wall-mounted feeder is in the works.
"That's all I do now. I don't do any custom work at all. I'm simply developing the WoWo line."
The items include that curvaceous $599 Dog Pod featured in Architectural Digest and its more conventional looking sister, the Ellipse Bed, both of which come with washable faux-fur cushions and look like something Charles Eames might have dreamed up had he lived in the time of the pampered pet.
The exposure to Architectural Digest readers, who number in the millions around the world, is another one of those career happenstances, says Ross.
"I was very happy about that. I never would have dreamed I'd be in that magazine when I graduated from school."
Or that he'd be getting WoWo orders from pet lovers in Russia, Switzerland and Japan.
"I'm very excited to think about my products heading so far away."
And although he says he's "nowhere close to being finished with the pet thing, I'm excited about applying techniques to the human products."
These days he has one full-time employee and is even "starting to make a living."
Oliver, by the way, may be the artist's muse, but he doesn't have one of those posh puppy pods because his master has been too busy of late to make one big enough.
sfralic@png.canwest.com
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