LA Times August 25, 2005

Meet The Mini Modernists

Charley Wheelock of Portland based Kapow Design used to restore 18th and 19th century English antiques, but when his wife, Jessica gave birth to their daughter 2 ½ years ago, he put away the gilded stuff, dusted off his master’s degree in industrial design and went to work making a chair for baby Madeleine.

But not a shrunken version of an adult chair.  This one had to have no sharp corners, not pinch and be smooth to the touch.  He carefully chose water based, food-safe finishes and non toxic glue.  “Kids will eat furniture”, he says.  Strong joints on the chair and five legs for the table meant his daughter, and now 1-year-old son, Leo, could stand on the edge and not tip over.

“The majority of toddler furniture seems to underestimate the level of their sophistication,” Wheelock says.

“Having been shocked and humbled many times by the under-3 set, I make an effort to rise to their level when designing for them.  Tiny kids do have their limitations however: they can’t draft, they don’t know how to program machines and they cry a lot.  That is what I am for.  It is my duty as a parent and a designer to introduce kids to good design as early as possible.”

Be humble:  Sometimes great adult ideas don’t make sense to children.  Charley Wheelock of Kapow Design once cut a handle into the back splat of a chair so that it could be dragged around.  When his daughter, Madeleine, 2 ½, saw the cute handle she started swinging the chair around the room.  “when she went berserk, I realized that it wasn’t such a great idea,” he says.

-  Janet Eastman