Robert Erickson (furniture designer)
American furniture designer (born 1947)

Robert Erickson (born 1947 in Lincoln, Nebraska) is an American furniture designer and woodworker in Nevada City, California. He is a studio maker, who custom designs chairs and other furniture. His work is in several U.S. national collections.
Career
After leaving University of Nebraska with an English degree in 1969, Erickson traveled to Druid Heights in Marin County, California to study with furniture makers Ed Stiles and Roger Somers.
In the summer of 1970, Erickson was employed by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Gary Snyder, said to be inspiration for Jack Kerouac's The Dharma Bums. His role was to help hand-build a Japanese and Native American-inspired home in Nevada County, California. Erickson Woodworking was established next to Snyder's property the same year when he bought a plot of land to build his workshop, and he also sold his first chair. The wood shop has operated in this location since that time – now with the addition of solar power and phone lines.
Most of Erickson's chairs incorporate the "contoured floating back" design, which he began incorporating into his chairs in 1974.
Robert Erickson is married to Liese Greensfelder, a science writer who also helps to manage the business.
The public source identifies “Robert Erickson (furniture designer)” as american furniture designer (born 1947). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Robert, Erickson and furniture.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 20, 2024. The linked authority identifier is Q16115104. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1947, 1969, 1970 and 1974.
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This entry incorporates text from “Robert Erickson (furniture designer)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.