From Cowboys and Country Magazine, Summer 1998

QUANDARY DESIGN INC.
Beauty in the Unexpected


by Jane Pattie     Furniture Photos: David O. Marlow

Furniture maker Greg Race has an eye for the aesthetic. He utilizes natures textures and hues in a mixture of natural materials to create his award-winning designs.

Greg Race has struck paydirt in the colorful mining town of Leadville, Colorado - the home of the legendary silver king Horace Tabor who lived in opulence and died in poverty in a shack on the outskirts of Leadville.

The boomtown is quieter now, but riches come in many forms and are still to be found by those with the imagination to search for them. Greg Race did just that when he mined the western furnishings industry and the struck the mother load with his unique, award-winning furniture made by his company, Quandary Design, Inc., in Leadville.

Snowboarder Turned Furniture Maker
Race is a 27-year-old man with an eye for the aesthetic and is known for his talent of mixing wood grains and interesting shapes. When he exhibited a grouping of table and stools during the 1997 Western Design Conference in Cody, Wyoming, he was one of the three winners of the coveted $10,000 Switchback Ranch Purchase Award for outstanding piece in the show. His winning hallway table is now on permanent exhibit a the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody - quite a coup for the newcomer to the business.

Race studies western furnishings around the country to see what he likes and can improve on. 'It's been a system of being self-taught - of trial and error," he says. "But that's how we arrived at many of the unique combinations we developed.  "One of the things I see in western furnishings is that a lot of the designs and ideas have been pretty well run into the ground. There's a lot of repetition - so much copying." He reveals.

Race intends for his work to stand on its own as a unique creation. "We try to make things a bit more contemporary-looking and a bit cleaner than most traditional western furniture," he says. "Yet we try to be more complex in our materials. We create works of exquisite subtlety that blend infinite complexity with traditional simplicity. The overall form is simpler than the Victorian influence that is seen in much of today's Western furniture."

"We use some of those elements for visual continuity to let people know what they're looking at, but we add complexity through the material, such as in the details on the hallway table. The redwood and juniper have fragmentary lines and pockets and natural features that I leave for interest."

The Design Comes First
Race's design determines what piece of wood he uses. "It seems to be fairly traditional that artists try to draw inspiration from their material. We come up with our design, and then look for specific pieces that fit that bill, which is a more nontraditional method of working," Race says. Quandary Design is a wholesale manufacturer geared to working with interior designers and retailers. At such shows as the Western Design Conference, the company spotlights their best custom work. Race's brother, Todd, recently began working for Quandary Design after completing an art history degree.

"We have to attract interest and draw attention to our products with pieces that fit the markets and the individual needs of interior designers and retailers," notes Race. Also sold by Quandary Design are tables, chairs, and bar stools that are semi-custom pieces. Even though each piece is similar in style, it is individual and unique. These pieces are cataloged and are often available in inventory.

"A company has to be equipped to handle the demands of custom work and do it competitively," Race comments. "What I see now is a lot of people working on a very small scale and producing very high-priced custom work. What we are trying to do - while we're certainly not cheap - is offer other options: design-oriented pieces that are similar but are interesting in variation and materials.

"A custom-made chair, for example, may be a bit more individual, but it is a much more difficult product to sell because someone had to see the piece. With our semicustom-made work, we can send examples to various retailers so that a buyer will have some expectation of what he is getting. Each piece then stands on its own but has enough continuity to our sample piece that is considered the same design. Our intent is to be a designer and manufacturer of unique but available furnishings."

Unique use of Wood, Leather and Metal
Quandary Design's creations are a combination of various materials and eye-pleasing forms. "There's a lack of blending of materials that I notice in the western furnishings market," says Race. "Most manufacturers are very loyal to their trade, and they don't mix materials. We're always trying to find new combinations that work well together - combinations that others may not think of. We want to be a comprehensive design company that had a bagful of tricks - one that's equally skillful with wood, leather and metal, and capable of competently employing and other medium.

" I present Quandary Design as its own entity and let the products build their own character and individuality," Race says. "I want the buyers to grow personal attachments to the pieces and enjoy them."