By Ann Volkwein
Photographs by Stephanie Zollshan

Furniture designer Lucca Zeray is in his sawdust-strewn studio at Pittsfield’s Wyandotte Woolen Mills, tracing the seams of his well-worn sweatshirt to illustrate the point that he is in the middle of making. The young creative has built a reputation in the design world for his relatively affordable and undeniably elegant flat-pack shelves, but his billable goods are just a part of a larger philosophy.

Zeray has a whirring mind and a habit of speaking rapidly and eloquently, especially when he’s contextualizing his practice within the larger scheme of things. Right now he’s in the middle of connecting the decline of American manufacturing since the Reagan era to socioeconomic unfairness and the diminishing quality of basic goods. “I beat the crap out of this, and it’s lasted, even though I’ve worn it for 50 hours a week for two years straight,” he says of his favorite green hoodie. In Lucca land, a sweatshirt is about so much more than a sweatshirt.

His company, Lucca House, is no less open to unorthodox associations. The purist, flat-pack furniture draws more inspiration from sources like reggae and punk music collectives than any of the buzzwords that design darlings so commonly rattle off.

Zeray’s populist stance isn’t a pose. He recently released the 1:1 scale drawings for his popular 5/4/3/2 foot grid shelves, which could be yours for the mere cost of printing and shipping. The opposite of gatekeeping from the top, his approach is a DIY antidote to fast furniture’s cheap race to the bottom.

Scaling from 1 to 7 feet, Lucca House shelves are made from Quebec-sourced, pre-finished plywood that is wine- and even coffee-stain resistant. Pieces come in a variety of colors and ship from the Pittsfield studio. They’re far easier to assemble than your average IKEA haul; all it takes to fit Zeray’s perfectly calibrated pieces together is a firm shove. *

Zeray grew up in Brooklyn and attended SUNY Purchase, where he studied furniture design and graduated in 2014. While an undergrad, Zeray encountered furniture artists such as Beth Ireland, Michael Puryear, and Isabelle Moore, thanks to the university’s visiting artist residency programs. “I was able to have bench space next to some of the most prolific studio furniture people—not designers,” he stresses. “That’s the difference, [my studio neighbors] were much more craft-intensive.”

The original concept for his furniture line took root as Zeray’s senior project, which gestured at Enzo Mari, the post-war anti-fascist Italian designer who released a set of furniture designs that anyone could make for themselves out of materials from their local hardware store and pre-cut timber. After graduation, Zeray landed in Brooklyn, and made a living working for furniture designers like Vonnegut/Kraft and Stillmade while taking on set and production design jobs.

When his partner, Miranda Hughes, got a job at Blue Q, a novelty manufacturer in Pittsfield, they made the move north. They had a new apartment to furnish. “My mom was like, ‘Hey, what about all of your crap from your senior project? Go pull it out of the basement.’”

It was around then that Zeray came to grips with the fact that his heart was not in commercial set design. ““I did a big boomerang,” he recalls. “After you do three hair-loss commercials in a row, you kind of lose your sanity.”

So Zeray did as many Gen-Zers with creative chops looking to make a pivot had before him. He made a few pieces and posted them on Instagram. When the shelves got a little traction, he made a few more, and created a website. “I knew something was happening when I got a few orders from people I didn’t know,” Lucca says.

Lucca House designs are remarkably flexible in both size and shape. They’re solutions for real problems, influenced by a designer who grew up in a small apartment where every square inch had to be accounted for. How well or badly a living space is organized, he realized, can have a direct effect on a person’s general well-being—which is Zeray’s primary focus. “But I’m not a social worker. I’m not an architect. I can’t build housing. I like making shapes and cutting wood. I’m going to stay in my lane as much as I can,” he says. He’s also focused on maintaining a sustainable and equitable business. “I want to make sure that those of us who work here can buy everything we sell,” he explains. “The design world loves to just throw expensive materials on very basic forms. And I’m like, screw that. Let’s just figure out how to solve the problem quickly.”

And he has. The banding, trimming, and tolerance-testing of his pieces requires hands-on work, but the massive machine that looms in the corner is a three axis CNC mill that he estimates dates back to the turn of the millennium and, like his hoodie, does the job well. “I program the files, I hit go, and walk away and do other things,” is how he sums up the process. He purchased his mill for $8,000—one-tenth of market value—from an elevator company outside of Boston. “It allows me as one schmuck in a warehouse to compete with large brands,” Zeray says.

After four years living in Pittsfield, Zeray and Hughes recently moved to Cummington. Still, Zeray will give you a “stump speech” for his imaginary run for Pittsfield mayor. His platform includes measures to support local gathering places and require the filling of the city’s empty storefronts. “One of the biggest pros of the Berkshires is one of the biggest cons,” he says. “There’s just not that many people. And so, the people that have light in their eyes clump together very quickly.” He yearns for more makers and creators to come and join him and foment another industrial revolution in western Massachusetts—or simply grab a bite at Wander.

“This was one of the largest wool manufacturers in the country,” he says, gesturing out the window at the Wyandotte building, which is adjacent to his workplace and whose floors sit empty. “I’m just amazed at the amount of infrastructure there is here, and the lack of utilization.”

The bicycles and motorcycles lodged in corners of the studio give clues to Zeray’s off-duty life in the Berkshires. There’s even a canoe kicking around somewhere, he says. “It’s important to take your pleasure seriously, which is an Eames thing,” he notes. “You gotta take play seriously.”

luccahouse.com