Piece Initiative
In the course of his career, Finne has assembled a portfolio of architectural elements—steel hardware fittings, CNC-milled cabinet faces, lighting fixtures, and more—that unify his body of work and allow clients to enjoy custom designed pieces without bearing the full cost of product development. Here, the master bathroom is fitted out with Finne’s twisted steel robe hooks and towel bars—“We use them on pretty much all of our projects,” he says—and a pair of steel-framed mirrors with integral LED lighting, also of his design. Suspended in front of the vanity cabinet’s window wall, the latter elegantly do their job without obscuring the view outside.
The steel balusters that transform the home’s central staircase also drew from Finne’s catalog, with a delicate abstract design laser-cut into 3/8-inch steel plate. “The pattern had already been road-tested,” says Finne, as had the asymmetrically carved sapele cap rail, but the railing assembly still required a custom installation. “It’s very difficult to predict how something like that will perform,” Vassallo says. “We modified how the pieces were installed as we learned more about how the installation was performing. We [developed] some methods of adding rigidity without detracting from the design concept.”
For the 8-foot glass light fixture that hangs in the stair hall, Finne scaled up an earlier 18-inch-long version, arranging colored glass rods on a sheet of tempered glass, fusing the assembly in an oversize kiln, and laser-cutting it into a serpentine shape. The result is striking, but unlike Finne’s other custom gear, it will remain unique to this house. “I’ll sell the mirrors; I have a small inventory,” he says. But in spite of receiving numerous calls requesting a duplicate light fixture, “I will not make that again for anyone,” he says. “The installation was really tough. It took us six hours to hang that one light fixture.”
