Contact me directly for wholesale information.
If you'd like high resolution images of my work click here, but please send a note and tell me how you will use the images.
If you don't trust website contact forms (I usually don't): timothyliles [at] gmail.com
I'm an artist living and working along the diminutive seacoast of New Hampshire. I like toys, fast food, surfing, and making things that are simple from a new perspective.
My latest work is a collection called “New New England,” a modern set influenced by traditional American craft aimed at connecting consumers with the source of their products, bringing maker and user closer together.
I firmly believe that consumers deserve deeper connections to the places and the people their products come from and that our emotional ties, nostalgia, and pride associated with our material things are what makes them worth having. At that, every design is produced end-to-end within New England in collaboration with true craftsmen and craftswomen who imbue their objects with all the love and respect that honest hand-work is capable of.
100% hand-braided, hand-laced wool
Dimensions: 96” x 84”
A modern pop icon paired with a tradition of technique. This is a thick, double-sided, wool rug that will without a doubt last a lifetime. A modern heirloom. This rug is made by the extremely skilled staff at the County Braid House in Tilton, NH: countrybraidhouse.com
Made to order in custom colors, or ask what colors we have in stock.
Price available on request.
Domestic maple, milk paint
Dimensions: 34” x 16” x 16” (18” seat height)
An understated, three-legged wooden chair with a sash of color that extends from slightly above to just below the seat. An exploration of the straight-forward joinery found in a classic Windsor and how the form can be pared down and modernized.
This chair is made by Fred Chellis of Little River Windsors in Berwick, ME: littleriverwindsors.com
Made to order in custom colors, or light cream and charcoal in stock.
Price available on request.
Locally sourced and hand-pounded black ash, textile-covered cord, plastic socket
Dimensions: lamp shown: 52” x 16” diamter
A peaceful, woven lamp made in the tradition of the basket-making Sweetser family of Northern New Hampshire. Solid ash legs incorporated into the weave turn the basket into a lampshade and the textile-covered cord informs the object as a modern light.
This lamp was lovingly made, from tree to finished product, by Bill and Sherry Gould of Bradford, NH: westernabenakibaskets.com
Made to order in custom dimensions.
Price available upon request.
This project began as a very simple solution to the theme of “color” for a show sponsored by the American Design Club. Since then the product has taken off and is sold in shops, museums, and galleries all over the world such as the Future Perfect in Brooklyn, the Tate Gallery in London, Oye Modern in Australia, The Norweigan Centre for Design and Architecture in Oslo, Handmade in Switzerland, the list goes on.
Sold in multiple color assortments and a universal size range, the Crayon Rings have proven to be a product with true mass appeal. They seem to hit a nostalgic and happy spot for so many different types of people, and that makes me happy.
For wholesale information please email me directly: timothyliles [at} gmail.com
A theme I’m always working towards is the idea of a person or a thing being everything to everyone. A few years ago I tried to write a very unspecific and innocuous message that could be applied to everyone I saw in a vaguely positive way. I began giving out these business cards to strangers without saying anything else or giving them time to respond to me directly. I continue to give the cards out without any specific goal or end in mind. If you’d like one, email me and I’d be happy to mail it to you.
This was a project completed for 225 Forest, which is a store in Laguna Beach, CA bringing all the action sports products from Nike, Hurley, and Converse into one retail location. The brief from Converse was to simply create a piece of furniture which is compatible with their brand. The final result is three found chairs whose forms are very different from one another, brought together into one object by a skin of hundreds of feet shoelace.
Another tenet of good design that I’m constantly chasing is simple manufacture. This stool was made in a few short hours, from conception to completion, with found objects as well as common materials bought at a hardware store. The unique form of the seat comes from pouring cement into a bucket and the joints between the seat and the legs were made simply by sinking the tops of the legs into the wet cement. The objects used were the casting bucket, an axe handle, a small shovel, and a rake handle.
I continue to be interested in shared experiences and shared nostalgia. This is a refurbished pellet gun which represents an early rite of passage. It’s a personal piece which many people won’t immediately relate to but I wanted to take an object which is inherently childish and mature at the same time and enhance those elements even more by presenting it in sophisticated materials and finishes and include a message that is very clearly delivered to someone perhaps too immature to handle the responsibility. The metal components were found and chromed, the stock is hand-carved maple with laser-etched details.
This chair was the premier example from a series titled “Be Well.” The aim of the project was to explore something we all generally want: to be well, then take it to an extreme that might make us question that desire. The form and materials of the chair are all carefully selected to be at once familiar and off-putting. The simple, blond wood is familiar in a domestic setting, but the crepe sanitary paper has a home in the doctor’s office. The user is meant to advance the roll and tear off the excess for a clean sitting surface every time. For someone like my father, an extreme germophobe, this is a practical solution to a reasonable problem. To most people, however, it’s just a bit much.
email: timothyliles@gmail.com
phone: (401) 338-0167
studio address: 209 Concord Way Portsmouth, NH 03801
Timothy’s approach to design is both conceptual and highly tactile. His work is guided by the idea that best design is not overwrought; it is merely simple from a new perspective. As his projects are more likely to materialize on a pair of sawhorses than on a PC, he operates under the premise that our technology-saturated age has elevated the status of handmade goods to new levels of desirability. What was once considered inefficient is now luxurious. He firmly believes that users deserve deeper connections to the places and the people their products come from, that our emotional ties, nostalgia, and pride associated with our material things is what makes them worth having. At that, every design is produced end-to-end within New Hampshire, or at furthest, the New England region in collaboration with true craftsmen and craftswomen who imbue their objects with all the love and respect that honest hand-work is capable of.
Timothy Liles is a New England based designer originally from Long Island, New York. He received a BFA in furniture design from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) and believes that creating something where there once was nothing is the most magical feeling there is. After five years as a sneaker designer for Converse and with a handful of multi-million pair sellers under his belt, an unexpected but welcome realignment of priorities led Timothy to leave the corporate world and focus on his personal projects.
On the success of his blog-famed “Crayon Rings” and with furniture projects like the “Shoestring Settee” gaining in popularity, Timothy opened his own studio in late 2009.
His latest work is a collection called “New New England,” a modern set influenced by traditional American craft aimed at connecting consumers with the source of their products, bringing maker and user closer together. He currently resides in Portsmouth, NH and can often be found surfing or wandering the aisles of Home Depot. Like Kevin Garnett, Timothy believes that anything is possible.
(via damionsilver)
No Kooks. Eugene Cole.
Hockney again. via Shawn Stussy.
(via thegauchelife)
(via thegauchelife)
(via thegauchelife)
(via chiyotakahashi)
“Timothy Liles, you are a DOUCHE!!! your rings look like ring findings, OBVIOUSLY you are just another um ‘artist’ that uses ‘minimalist’ as an excuse for not being creative. I HOPE YOU READ THIS… TIMOTHY LILES, YOU SUCK!!!”
(via thegauchelife)
Yesterday I had a meeting with a braided rug maker in Tilton, NH. The shop owner there, Jan Jurta, gave me a tour of their facility and a short lesson on how braided rugs are traditionally put together. This is a braiding machine that her father invented 40 years ago. I plan on working with these folks in the near future.
So The Gun Store is a place in Las Vegas is a store that you can buy guns at but where you can also shoot various kinds of handguns, automatics, and semiautomatics. Of course, the whole place was crawling with British dudes when we were in there, all of whom were peeing their pants and holding several hundred dollars worth of ammo.
Timmy chose an AK 47 to fire 25 rounds with, and I went with the ladies' package, which included 20 rounds with a handgun, 25 with the AK 47 and a free t shirt. Pretty good deal, right?
We waited for a few minutes after picking out ear protection, eye protection, and targets. We got the classic shooting targets, although there were plenty of threatening options (read: non white targets). We could only go in one at a time, so Timmy went in first.
Our gun pro was a vaguely attractive blonde who was made more attractive by her tattoos and penchant for guns. More attractive or more insane, I'm not sure I remember now. She told us how to hold the gun properly and how to aim and not shoot ourselves or anyone else.
Timmy was done quite soon, as 25 rounds ain't nothin in an AK 47. I was next and I gotta tell you, three shots into the handgun, I was wondering when it would all be over.
If you look closely in the second picture, I would like to point out that I in fact got a bullet in the kill zone (kill zone??) of the target. YEA! Also, I wish the picture of me and the AK 47 showed the pink stock of the gun and the picture of Hello Kitty also holding an AK and in protective gear.
So that was the last of our Las Vegas experience. After having all of that bullet adrenaline rushing through our veins, we got back into ol non threatening Vanpers and drove off into the desert and to our "honeymoon" in Palm Springs!
August 30
9:39 a.m. A caller complained that a singer at the farmer’s market was too loud, but an officer found it was not unreasonable. 1:44 p.m. Verbal warning given to someone in a motorized wheelchair who was recharging his chair using someone else’s electricity.
August 20
7:23 p.m.
Responded to Gosling Meadows for a report about a domestic disturbance. An officer found people playing a video game and no crime.
August 18
3:41 p.m.
Responded to Bow Street for a complaint about juveniles drinking wine. Officer found the wine but no youths.
1:45 p.m.
An elderly resident who frequently calls 911 and hangs up, did so again and when dispatch returned her call, the resident said she wanted the phone number for the cemetery because three people were missing from her house.
August 14
9:54 a.m.
An elderly resident phoned 911 to ask for a ride to the store.
7:12 p.m.
Report taken on Holiday Drive following a report about a fight during which someone was slapped.
August 10
7:55 a.m.
Dispatched the animal control officer to Peirce Island for “an aggressive squirrel.”
August 4
11:20 a.m.
Report taken about the theft of lobsters and a bucket.
6:26 p.m.
Responded to Lafayette Road for a report of a woman screaming at a child. An officer found it was a 3-year-old not sitting still while having gum removed from her hair.
11:37 p.m.
An elderly resident who often calls 911 and hangs up made two 911 hang-up calls and when a dispatcher called back, the resident asked if the 911 operator had any jokes.
August 2
11:23 a.m.
A Union Street resident reported her car was vandalized with “a lot of food.”
6:18 p.m.
A caller said she wanted to speak to someone about a bus company, then screamed “just forget it” and hung up.
August 1
7:01 a.m.
A woman phoned 911 to say she needed to know what time it was.
July 28
7:05 p.m.
A Lafayette Road caller said he asked a man to get out of his trash bin, but the man refused.
July 7
9:12 a.m.
Investigated a report about cars parked in the police parking lot and discovered they were unmarked state police cruisers.
June 23
9:30 a.m.
A State Street property owner asked police to take note of “the skateboarding community” using a new railing to board.
May 30
9:39 p.m.
Euthanized via firearm a raccoon attacking cars in the area of Bartlett Street.
May 25 5:52 a.m. A caller reported an injured seagull bleeding on Woodbury Avenue.
May 16
10:41 p.m.
Reunited a backpack with owner.
May 10
3:33 p.m.
Responded to Lincoln Ave. for a report of a cat acting “strange.” Officer found the cat was “just very old.”
10:27 p.m.
Investigated a report about suspicious people in a car parked on Marcy Street and found young adults “enjoying their evening and some hot wings.”
May 8
1:38 p.m.
Took a report from a Park Street caller about a man who stopped by a home and “asked to come in to see if there was anything in (the) cellar” that could be sold to his company.
May 3
11:57 p.m.
Responded to Wedgewood Drive where a female was “flipping out” during a verbal argument about facebook postings.
April 22
1:38 p.m.
Report taken from a caller who stated his wife was poisoning him with magic and he would like a report.
