Green Seam Designs | The Art Of Parts Partner Website

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By Peter Briccetti

When you walk down North Wallace Avenue in Bozeman’s Northeast Historic Brewery District, your senses are bombarded by a variety of noises, sites, and smells. There are the wafting aromas of the local bakery, colorful clothing displayed in the windows of boutique shops, and friendly chit-chat from latte-sippers sitting outside of the coffee shop. The neighborhood feels both revitalized as well as gritty and down-to-earth. Sophisticated luxurious aesthetics co-exist with the ski bums, artists, and hard-working locals—a metaphor for the current state of Bozeman.

If you walk a little farther and tilt your ear towards a set of large weathered double doors, the entrance to a hid-den compound, you’ll begin to hear an array of noises: the soft hum of a mig welder, the high-pitched whine of table saws, and if you listen closely enough, the gentle “tick-tick-tick” of a precision sewing machine.

Behind these ancient double doors is a courtyard where you’ll find a scene alive with color, texture, and sound. Ian Myers, one of Green Seam’s talented woodworkers, yells out a greeting to Daniel Strickland, head of the metal shop, and strolls over to discuss the mechanical connection for a set of steel and walnut chairs both shops are working on. Jim Whelan, head of the upholstery shop, gives his colleague Shawn Miner a hand lifting a massive bolt of rich blue velvet out of a van parked at one of the other entrances with its back doors hanging open. You can feel a quiet sense of purpose and focus on the movements of the folks hard at work on their tasks—fabrication shops distinct from each other but separated by a few steps at most.

What truly distinguishes green seam is their commitment to the creative process. Unlike traditional furniture design companies that often outsource key aspects of the design and manufacturing process, Green Seam does everything at their workshop on North Wallace Avenue.

Green Seam Designs is a furniture design and build company that thrives on the power of interconnected creativity, where wood, metal, and upholstery converge in a single compound to create custom pieces. Here, raw materials are transformed into bespoke pieces of furniture that elevate spaces and enrich lives, always driven by the belief that intentional spaces can be both beautiful and built to last.

“We work far better together than we would as separate businesses.”

–Ken White, Green Seam Designs

This facility didn’t always have the feel of an artisan furniture guild. Thompson Limanek, a graduate of the Master of Architecture program at Montana State University, bought this property in 2015 when it was a junkyard filled to the brim with scrap and detritus. Thompson, with help, loaded countless roll-off dumpsters of metal, wood, and large appliances to make room for his fledgling company. In the years following, with the vision

of creating multifaceted heirloom quality furniture, he got to work designing and creating. He sewed the upholstery, cut the wood, drew up the plans, and welded the steel. Since then, his team has grown dramatically, although the vision has always remained the same.

What truly distinguishes Green Seam is their commitment to the creative process. Unlike traditional furniture design companies that often outsource key aspects of the design and manufacturing process, Green Seam does everything at their workshop on North Wallace Avenue. While a lot of their furniture lands in residences in the Yellowstone Club or other high-net-worth areas across the country, many pieces get placed locally in Bozeman homes or businesses. For example, most patrons of wine bars and steak houses on Main Street wouldn’t know the tables, chairs, banquettes, and bar-stools were made just ten blocks away.

For a thoughtfully designed home in northeast Bozeman, Green Seam sought a modern design with deep velvety upholstery, warm walnut wooden fixtures, and a recurring diamond composition that shows up discreetly in many layers of the final space. This project exemplifies the collaborative brilliance of Green Seam’s creative integrated design and build team.

“Turning a design into a real-world piece is where the magic happens. It’s about understanding how the materials will interact, how the curves will flow, and how the piece will ultimately feel to the touch.”

–Jim Whelan, Green Seam Designs

Walking into the wood shop, you immediately take in the nutty and earthy aroma of walnut, and the warm glow of the wood around you. Lumber of all kinds is stacked high overhead, only broken up by state-of-the-art woodworking machines and beautiful old hand tools.

At the heart of the woodshop are Ken White and his team of highly skilled artisans. Together, they transform raw lumber into the foundational elements of exquisite furniture. Ken believes the shop’s greatest strength lies in its ability to work symbiotically with Green Seam’s other departments. “We work far better together than we would as separate businesses,” he says.

For the project featured here, the wood shop played a pivotal role in bringing the customer’s vision to life. They expertly crafted three distinct tables, each showcasing the client’s love of the craft with bold, sharp lines. Both the game table and the coffee table feature beautiful brass inlays carefully crafted by Ken and woodworker Lyndsey Stupay. Each piece references the strong geometric lines seen in the flooring of the residence and the building’s exposed structural steel framing. This geometric composition is revealed again in the dining area where Green Seam designed the gorgeous banquette and dining set. As they do on all projects, the team constructed each piece of the dining chairs from scratch, ensuring that the hand-carved curves of the back and seat gave the perfect soft seating experience, juxtaposed against the hard lines of the metal on the frame.

As you enter the metal shop, the first thing that strikes you is the noise. Daniel Strickland, the lead metalworker in Green Seam’s metalworking shop, is standing over a red-hot piece of steel, repeatedly hammering it with strong, calculated blows. Daniel does much of the shaping the old-fashioned way, with a forge and a hammer.

His work embodies a blend of strength and finesse, balancing structural integrity with delicate welding techniques to bring to life complex designs. Daniel knows the intimate properties of metal, precisely how much heat and stress a piece can withstand without compromising its form or function. A master of patinas, Dan has worked hard crafting the perfect aged and natural blend on a variety of metal surfaces.

For this specific project, Dan worked closely with the wood shop team when creating the patina steel frames for furniture in every room of this home as well as the brass elements of the game table. As the design for the game table took shape, Dan began to work on shaping the triangular brass caps that fit flush into the table’s unique vertices. Using his background in welding and alloy metalwork, Dan was able to heat the delicate brass to the exact right temperature and shape it to fit the triangular space like a glove.

Stepping into the upholstery shop, you’re struck by the quiet of the room. Bolts of leather and fabric line the walls, deadening the steady murmur of Jim and his team. Here, they transform sketches into exquisite pieces of art. Their approach is a unique blend of tradition and innovation, drawing inspiration from centuries of craftsmanship while also embracing cutting-edge techniques. Jim’s philosophy centers on achieving the elusive “wow” factor, aiming to create pieces that not only please the eye but also evoke a sense of wonder and timelessness.

“I often look to history for both inspiration and fabrication methods.” Jim explains, “to understand the principles of design and furniture-making that have stood the test of time. We want to create pieces that aren’t just beautiful today, but will be cherished for generations to come.”

Creating enduring works of art requires more than just aesthetic vision. Jim emphasizes the critical role of problem-solving and meticulous attention to detail. “Turning a design into a real-world piece is where the magic happens,” he says. “It’s about understanding how the materials will interact, how the curves will flow, and how the piece will ultimately feel to the touch.”

Jim pays particular attention to how the fabric drapes and conforms to the furniture’s shape. The upholstery shop works with the clients to help them understand the unique properties of each material and how it will lie on the piece of furniture. Once understood, the upholsters can implement proper techniques to achieve a perfectly tailored look. For example, when making the blue velvet couch, Jim had to account for the “nap” or the tiny hairs of the velvet, so that the material looks consistent when viewed from any angle. The complex art of mastering the directionality of stretching velvet over a frame is complicated by the fact that there was only enough material for one attempt.

The most challenging part of the project for the upholstery shop was fitting the diamond quilted leather to the banquette in the dining area. They had to carefully stitch the fine Italian leather with the diamond pattern, design it to have the just the right buildup of foam and batting to create depth and beautiful character, and then carefully sew the puzzle together. The upholstery shop’s mastery over material manipulation, combined with a deep understanding of form and function, allows them to create pieces that are truly one-of-a-kind, embodying the essence of Green Seam’s commitment to quality and innovation.

Entering the design studio, you immediately see Thompson deep in conversation with Jay Lesser and Ashton Fell, the designers who weave together the visions that the build teams will execute. They sit casually around the beautifully patinaed walnut conference table, aged with graphite smudges and a decade of coffee cup rings, working on making design dreams a reality.

For this particular project, the diamond motif served as the guiding principle. “It all started with the floor,” Jay explains, referring to the existing diamond pattern laid by the contractor. “From there, it seemed natural to incorporate that shape into other elements, like the diamond-shaped leather stitching on the leather benches and banquette. The pattern seemed to inspire every other layer of the design.”

To ensure consistency across all elements, the design team took a holistic approach, considering everything from floor plans to fabric texture. They created collaborative designs that showcased a consistent language throughout the entire home. Wood, metal, and upholstery all came together to achieve the desired design intent.

Green Seam’s success lies in its interconnectedness. Here, the boundaries between departments are constantly being blurred. “It’s so easy for folks to just walk over and communicate directly with each other,” says Thompson. “It’s how we’re able to get this small, funky space to routinely produce incredible furniture.”

Thompson’s embrace of this ethos allows Green Seam Design to tackle highly complex projects and match them with equally innovative solutions. This unified approach allows Green Seam to create heirloom quality furniture, leaving a lasting impact on both the surrounding space and the user interaction. Just as the perfect combination of furniture in a room can elevate it to new heights, Green Seam Designs is a design and build firm that is much more than the sum of its exemplary parts.

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