The Perfectly Imperfect Vessels of Madeline Coven: Architecture in Hide and Pewter

The Bushwick studio of designer Madeline Coven sits on the hazy, industrial border where Queens dissolves into Brooklyn—a landscape defined by the heavy, rhythmic clatter of hydraulic repair shops, the occasional neon hum of a nightclub, and the utilitarian sprawl of beef distributors. It is a place of grit and production, far removed from the polished showrooms of Manhattan. Inside a building that has been partially reclaimed as a high-end members’ club, Coven’s fourth-floor workspace feels like a laboratory of the tactile. Here, the air is thick with the scent of raw materials and the constant, rhythmic noise of construction. One side of the room is a fortress of storage boxes; the other is a hive of activity, populated by the essential vernacular of the maker: drill presses, ventilation hoses, and a singular, glowing hot plate used to transform solid tin into a malleable, liquid medium.

The Genesis of a Material Practice

To understand Madeline Coven’s work is to understand her relationship with the "impossible." During a recent visit, the conversation quickly veered away from the aesthetics of furniture design and toward the boundaries of her process. Coven was in the midst of preparing metal-casting tests for an upcoming exhibition in Santa Fe. These pieces were born from a fusion of ancient history and modern frustration: using images sourced from the paleontology archives of a New Mexico university, she had carved the imprints of prehistoric fossils into slabs of wood, then cast the resulting voids in aluminum.

"I’m always trying to recreate patterns or textures that occur naturally because they’re so unbelievable to me," Coven explains. "But the way they already exist is better than what I could ever make." The process was inherently flawed—the molten metal often obliterated the delicate, painstaking details she had carved into the wood. When asked if the Sisyphean nature of this work—constantly falling short of an impossible, natural benchmark—was frustrating, her response was surprisingly sanguine: "I’m not striving for perfection."

This refusal to chase the pristine is more than a stylistic choice; it is the cornerstone of her philosophy. It reflects a shift in the "zillennial" creative mindset—an embrace of the boundary-pushing, experimental, and, crucially, the fallible.

A Chronology of Creation: From Apprentice to Independent

Coven’s path to this unconventional studio practice was paved with diverse influences. Before establishing her own voice, she spent three formative years in the studio of renowned furniture designer Minjae Kim. She credits Kim with providing the essential architecture for her career, noting, "He does so much with so little and makes ideas work even without all the perfect tools and access." This period followed a rigorous academic training in sculpture and a stint as an artist’s assistant in Los Angeles, experiences that moved her away from the rigid mandates of industrial design.

"In industrial design, you’re often consumed by figuring out the most functional way to produce something or the most efficient material," she notes. Her own practice, by contrast, operates like a slow-burn experiment. She allows materials to lead, observing how they react to stress, heat, and time. This deep-seated curiosity likely stems from her upbringing; her father, an herbalist, was a master of the slow, observational walk. "He’d stop and point out every plant and take photos of it, and it would take forever to go on a short walk. But I think that close observation of the world influenced me a lot."

The pivotal moment for her current trajectory arrived three years ago. In collaboration with fellow Minjae Kim alumna Jenna Graziano, Coven designed a straight-backed chair featuring a frame of sand-cast recycled aluminum and a sling of cowhide. That piece established the "materials palette" she has explored ever since, with minor, deliberate detours into fiberglass and resin. "I like materials that are forgiving," she says. "I like for there to be room for error so unexpected things can happen."

Supporting Data: The Anatomy of a Vessel

The evidence of this "forgiving" process is scattered throughout her studio. Windowsills are crowded with the seeds and stones she periodically casts into metal; baking trays overflow with globular, sculptural forms; and, most prominently, the animal hides that have become her signature.

Coven sources her leather from a shop in her hometown of Albuquerque—a practice that began as a functional alternative to fiberglass but evolved into a core element of her design language. In her latest body of work, set to debut at the Lower East Side’s Galerie Was, Coven is exploring the form of the nonfunctioning vessel.

The creation process is a tactile dialogue:

1. The Soak: Hides are submerged in water, making them pliable and reactive.
2. The Tension: The damp hide is wrapped around a welded steel frame.
3. The Contraction: As the material dries, it shrinks and tightens, creating natural, organic folds.
4. The Hardware: The structure is fastened with pewter, which Coven manipulates as it cools to create "flinty" textures that mirror the raw nature of the hide.

When viewed at close range, the hide is undeniably visceral. Unlike synthetic alternatives, it carries the history of the animal—visible follicles, varied patches of density, and the unpredictable way it reacts to the frame. "There’s something very alive about it," Coven observes. "It has a mind of its own. I’ve had finished pieces even warp a bit over time, which shows how it’s still living and changing."

Implications: The Ethical Weight of the Medium

The use of animal skin in contemporary design inevitably invites a complex, and sometimes uncomfortable, philosophical inquiry. Coven does not shy away from the implications of using organic matter. She recounts an anecdote from the installation of her tables at St Vincents in Antwerp: a dog, upon encountering the furniture, began to sniff the edges. "I was like, Oh right, this is a chew toy."

The realization underscores the "eeriness" Coven admits to feeling. "It’s dead, and that feels heavy," she says. "But I’m not trying to ignore that weightiness." By integrating the material—whether in the form of mahogany tables edged in cowhide and pinned with pewter "buckles" for St Vincents or the lunar-screen wall lights for Jacqueline Sullivan—Coven forces the viewer to confront the boundary between object and organism.

Looking Forward: The Future of the Vessel

As Coven flips through a sketchbook filled with drawings of vases—some with thick, muscular bodies, others with delicate, pursed lips—it is clear that her research is ongoing. She has been delving into the history of canteens, which historically relied on animal hides and beeswax to retain water, a perfect intersection of utility and organic preservation.

The upcoming exhibition at Galerie Was represents a culmination of this period of intense testing. It is a collection that is, in the most literal sense, "perfectly imperfect." By allowing the hides to dictate their own shapes and the pewter to solidify into unpredictable, raw hardware, Coven is not merely creating furniture; she is documenting a process of natural decay and architectural transformation.

At a tender stage in her career, Coven is doing something few designers dare to do: she is grappling with the ethics and the existential weight of creation in real-time. She is asking the hard questions—who am I, and what is the cost of the things I put into the world?—and she is doing so with a level of rigor that is as refreshing as it is rare. Her work is not just a study of form; it is a meditation on the permanence of the impermanent. As she prepares for her debut in the Lower East Side, the design community will be watching to see how she balances that heavy, living history with the sleek, metallic hardware of her own invention. In the noisy, dusty heart of Bushwick, Madeline Coven is finding, one hide at a time, that there is beauty in the things we cannot fully control.