Thank you @dominomag for featuring our kitchen!!!! When we started renovating our home we didn’t know wtf we were doing but we definitely stayed on Domino to learn, and to be inspired. When Lauren and I and tiny Owen lived in a tiny house I remembered her saying “what if OUR house was on Domino one day?”
We feel incredibly humbled and blessed.
It took a long time but it was fun…ish? Lol
Thank you to the whole team at Domino for making our big dream a reality 🥹🥹🥹
Thank you to @dominomag for allowing me to tell my story and share my work and open my home to you all. 6 years ago When Lauren and I lived in a tiny little apartment I remember her saying “what if our house ever wound up in Domino” because we glean so much inspiration from this magazine. This means more than you know that little “what-if?” Turned into reality for us.
Again thank you to everyone involved in making this possible and thank you to @morgbulman for writing such an amazing piece and telling my story. And thank you to everyone for continuing to encourage me, all the kind words and support mean everything.
I’ll be posting links in my bio and my stories!
I hope it brings joy and encouragement to someone today.
Thank you for the lovely write up!!!! @designmilk@designcrush
Man, it’s surreal to read words about yourself somewhere you draw inspiration from. It’s more surreal given my background, or circumstances in life or messages I or maybe even you received.
All I can say is your imagination is possibly the single greatest tool in the entirety of creation. And whatever’s in yours it deserves to be out here with us!!!
Article is linked in my bio.
Dobro Stools are Finished and I’m so stoked!
Hello, I’m Robby and these stools started with a resonator guitar.
The dobro was patented in 1928 by the Dopyera brothers as a resonator instrument designed to project sound before electric amplification existed. Its metal cone pushed vibration outward so musicians could be heard across rooms, fields, and juke joints.
When it entered Mississippi Delta blues, it became part of a music shaped by artists like Charley Patton, Son House, and Robert Johnson musicians who layered meaning into melody and often spoke through double entendre.
That lineage resurfaced powerfully in Sinners, especially in the juke-joint scene where Sammie plays the resonator guitar. Seeing that instrument centered again reminded me how much projection mattered not just for sound, but for message.
These stools borrow from the anatomy of that guitar.
The circular seat references the resonator body.
The structure echoes the tension of strings and hardware.
And the brass fret markers along the “neck” aren’t decorative they’re Morse code inlays, embedding a hidden phrase directly into the piece.
That idea sits at the center of my thesis.
Black American Design has long relied on encoded systems messages embedded in craft when direct language wasn’t always safe. The blues carried those signals through music.
I’m interested in furniture that does the same.
Objects that hold bodies.
Objects that hold memory.
Objects that speak quietly, but clearly.
#sinners #blues
Dobro Stools Finished
Hello, I’m Robby and these stools started with a resonator guitar.
The dobro was patented in 1928 by the Dopyera brothers as a resonator instrument designed to project sound before electric amplification existed. Its metal cone pushed vibration outward so musicians could be heard across rooms, fields, and juke joints.
When it entered Mississippi Delta blues, it became part of a music shaped by artists like Charley Patton, Son House, and Robert Johnson musicians who layered meaning into melody and often spoke through double entendre.
That lineage resurfaced powerfully in Sinners, especially in the juke-joint scene where Sammie plays the resonator guitar. Seeing that instrument centered again reminded me how much projection mattered not just for sound, but for message.
These stools borrow from the anatomy of that guitar.
The circular seat references the resonator body.
The structure echoes the tension of strings and hardware.
And the brass fret markers along the “neck” aren’t decorative they’re Morse code inlays, embedding a hidden phrase directly into the piece.
That idea sits at the center of my thesis.
Black American Design has long relied on encoded systems messages embedded in craft when direct language wasn’t always safe. The blues carried those signals through music.
I’m interested in furniture that does the same.
Objects that hold bodies.
Objects that hold memory.
Objects that speak quietly, but clearly.
Hairstyle Table Pt. I
Some of the most beautiful design in the world lives in Black women’s hairstyles.
The rhythm of braids.
The shine of barrettes.
The way structure and decoration live together.
This table begins with those ideas.
Bent lamination allows the wood to curve and flow like braided strands. The inlays reference barrettes, small moments of ornament that also hold the structure together.
I’m interested in how everyday cultural practices become design systems.
Hair, like music or craft, carries language and identity.
This table is the first step in translating that language into furniture.
Dobro Stool Pt. IV
For this piece I started thinking about the anatomy of a dobro guitar and what would happen if I broke the instrument down into design parts.
The neck becomes the legs.
The bridge becomes the backrest.
The seat echoes the body of the instrument.
Each element carries the language of the guitar but functions as furniture.
Along the leg, the brass markers reference the fret markers musicians follow while playing. But instead of only marking position, they form Morse code.
That detail connects the piece to a bigger idea in my work. Black American craft traditions often hold double meaning. Objects that function on the surface while carrying deeper language underneath.
This stool is built from that idea.
Furniture shaped by music, structure, and code.
Dobro Stool Pt. III
When I think about Delta blues players, I imagine their hands moving across the neck of a guitar, following those small dots that guide the music.
This stool borrows from that moment.
The leg references the neck of a dobro. The brass inlays act like fret markers, but instead of just marking position they form Morse code.
A second layer of language built into the object.
That idea comes from a long tradition of coded expression in Black American craft. Meaning carried through rhythm, through pattern, through small details that speak quietly.
Sometimes the loudest stories are hidden in the smallest marks.
Dobro Stool Pt. I
The resonator guitar commonly called a dobro was developed in the late 1920s to solve a practical problem: volume. Its metal cone amplified vibration before electronic pickups were common. When the instrument became part of Mississippi Delta blues, it helped carry a music rooted in repetition, slide technique, and layered storytelling.
Delta musicians like Charley Patton and Son House helped shape the genre’s foundation. Robert Johnson later mythologized it. The blues often relied on metaphor and coded phrasing a form of double entendre born from necessity.
This stool draws from that lineage.
The circular seat references the resonator body. The brass fret markers are arranged as Morse code, embedding a hidden message within the structure. It’s furniture built like an instrument tension, projection, and encoded rhythm.
I’m interested in objects that operate the same way the blues did: usable, direct, but layered with meaning for those paying attention.
This coffee table is built around a braid.
The walnut and brass dowels function like a hieroglyph referencing how enslaved people in America used braiding as a method of communication and wayfinding. When speech was restricted, form became language. Hair became map. Craft became survival.
That history sits at the core of this piece. The dowels alternate intentionally, creating pattern, rhythm, and interruption. It’s furniture making doing cultural work function and meaning operating at the same time.
Double entendre isn’t an aesthetic here.
It’s the structure.
I’ve been working on this coffee table all year, not just to make it functional, but to make it speak.
This piece is built around double entendre a language Black American culture has always used out of necessity. When meaning couldn’t always be spoken directly, it lived in form, gesture, rhythm, and craft. I wanted this table to carry that same logic.
The steam-bent wood is doing more than creating curves. Those bends pull directly from Black hair from the craft, care, repetition, and intelligence embedded in Black American women’s hairstyles. Hair as structure. Hair as language. Hair as something that holds beauty and information at the same time.
On the surface, this is a coffee table.
Underneath, it’s a coded system.
Furniture techniques doing cultural work.
This is the kind of making I’m interested in objects you can live with, but also slowly learn to read.
I’ve been working on this small coffee table quietly for most of the year. Not because it was complicated to build, but because it was complicated to get right.
This piece is where my thesis finally settled into form. I wanted to explore how Black American visual languages especially those found in women’s hairstyles carry double meaning. How style becomes structure. How beauty becomes information. How curves, repetition, and restraint encode care, identity, and survival without needing explanation.
For the first time, I used bent wood as a way to draw that connection. The bends aren’t decorative. They’re doing the same work hairstyles do holding memory, signaling intention, and communicating belonging through form alone.
On the surface, it’s a coffee table.
Underneath, it’s a language.
