How Thout’s Patrick Turner would spend $4,000

How Thout’s Patrick Turner would spend $4,000

Patrick Turner is the designing mind behind Thout, one of Toronto’s most clamoured-after makers of furniture, lighting and shelving. Established in 2007, the firm is already internationally acclaimed for its clever, contemporary designs. (Turner has just returned from Saudi Arabia after presenting a “top-secret project” to the king himself.) But commoners can lay hands on Thout’s offerings, too: select pieces will soon be sold at home retailer EQ3. We climbed into Turner’s office—a treehouse-like room overlooking a forest of tools, stools and table legs—to chat about what’s worth breaking the bank for.

Turner surrounded by Thout's Holey Stump stools and Block chairs. (Photo by Jenna Marie Wakani)


Your Oldschool table was everywhere for a while. How many actually ended up in living rooms?
Only a handful. There was one in the window of Ministry of the Interior for a long time, and it generated a lot of interest, but who was going to buy it? It was $4,000. It was prohibitively overpriced.

Why was it overpriced?
I have no control over the price of that table. Retailers set the price.

If you had an extra $4,000, what would you buy?

I would get a Desktop Factory 125ci 3D printer.

And what’s your most indulgent buy of late?
A car.

What’s your favourite thing you didn’t make but wish you had?
The chair you’re sitting on. Eames shell chair, 1973.

Thout’s pop-up shop beside the Drake Hotel was a hit in October. What’s your next big idea?
I’m starting a sort of club—it’s not official yet—of about eight or nine designers. We’re thinking of road tripping to the next ICFF [International Contemporary Furniture Fair] in New York. But mostly we just sit around at the Beaconsfield and drink.