PROFILE
Hugh Acton
Still Working after All These Years
By Dan Obermaier

How many iconic furniture designs of the 20th century were built by the designer himself — not simply the prototype, but every example sold? While still a student at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in 1954, Hugh Acton began fabricating his Suspended Beam Bench — still his most famous piece — by hand at home, finally ceasing production in 1968. But in 2006, at the age of 82, he started making the bench again in his barn in Michigan, where he lives with his wife of 56 years, Dorothy, designing, sculpting and competing in triathlons.

Acton still assembles the benches himself, using components made by local suppliers. The reissued bench, in walnut and brass, is available through Design Within Reach. A version in cherry and chrome, with matching cabinets, drawers and shelves, will be retailed nationally in galleries that already represent his sculpture and jewelry.

“I talked to Rob Forbes [the founder] of DWR after a New York Times article came out three years ago, about his moving to a new house,” recalls Acton. “It had a photo of his furniture, and there was the bench. He was quoted saying it was among his favorite pieces. I called him up and thanked him. He said, ‘Why don’t you put that bench back into production?’ Dorothy liked the idea; she said, ‘It will give us something to do in our old age.’”

Recently, he tossed around six-foot-long walnut and brass bench tops as if they were cardboard, hammering their press-fit legs into place with a few blows. “The bench leg casting doesn’t represent technology today,” he admitted. “I have other, newer designs which do that. But with respect to the classic design, it’s a period worth preserving. It fits in more universally, in a wider latitude of settings.”

He set down a rubber mallet and talked about the genesis of the bench, initially a student design, and its sculptural Y-shaped legs. “As a student at Cranbrook,” Acton explained, “I fancied myself a sculptor.” The bench’s wishbone-shaped legs rise up from the floor, then bend and appear to flow through the wood slats. In fact, hidden steel tubes, that snake through the slats and brass spacers, give the bench its structural strength. Such “deception” might seem to violate modern design’s demand for honesty, but Acton disagrees. “The spacers do have a function,” he pointed out, “to position each slat in space. They’re not an illusion;