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“I love working with other people. I love collaboration, that’s the best part of the whole process. That’s what keeps me going.” — Geof Lilge, designer
A few years after Pure Design won the Editors Award for Furniture at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair in 2001, Lilge left the company, eventually returning to grad school and becoming a sessional instructor at the University of Alberta’s design faculty, where he taught until 2010.
In 2017, Lilge started Division 12, named after the Construction Specifications Institute’s category for interior furniture. Intended as a creative hub for Canadian design talent, the brand specializes in seating for the hospitality industry and features pieces fashioned largely through a combination of tube steel and wood. Division 12 was eventually ac- quired by Toronto furniture manufacturer Keilhauer in 2020, and Lilge remained its creative director until last year.
OnOurTable, the brand of which the Cook Island is part, was established in 2009 by Lilge and his wife Cindy Lazarenko, a renowned chef who operated the
Culina Highlands/Highlands Kitchen restaurants for five years, which featured many of Lilge’s pieces. On Our Table was where his famous charcuterie board was first conceived and produced, among numerous other kitchen accessories that ended up in restaurants across North America. The brand, which Lilge has returned to the helm of after some time away, includes some of the stools and chairs that were launched as a part of Division 12, which continue to be ordered by restaurants near and far.
It’s this overlap between art and commerce that keeps Lilge, now in his 50s, inspired.
“I’m an entrepreneur at heart,” he laughs. “And I love working with other people. I love collaboration, that’s the best part of the whole process. That’s what keeps me going.”
An upcoming project combines Lilge’s love of design with his educator past: a YouTube channel that will offer a glimpse into his creative process and the design world at large.
“l just love talking about the design process and the entrepreneurial aspect of being a designer and starting a manufacturing company,” says Lilge. “There are a lot of mistakes and strategic decisions over the years that I’ve made that I feel people can learn from.”
While Lilge works on scripts and records videos for this channel, there are other kitchen products that’s he’s yet to tackle that have recently occupied his brain — lighting among them — perhaps to hang over the Cook Island.
He likes to joke that over his career he’s tried his hand at designing almost everything in the kitchen “but the sink itself — nobody makes kitchen sinks in Edmonton. But if I can find someone to work with, you never know.” ED.
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