Heirloom Quality Meets Moody Vibes In This Furniture Collection

What happens when you take Tucson’s “go-to guy” for custom furniture (who also happens to descend from Quaker craftsmen) and pair him with a fashion designerturned-interior designer from New York? In the case of Scott Baker and Mary Ann Hesseldenz, you get a power couple poised to change the world of furniture design. Baker Hesseldenz debuted in 2016 with a six-piece “anti-collection collection,” which married heirloom quality with moody vibes. Today, the to-the-trade company is represented by seven showrooms across the country, including Made in Scottsdale.

How do you approach each collection?

Mary Ann Hesseldenz: In the beginning, we basically decided we’re just going to design what we like, and we’re not going to concern ourselves at all if it looks like a collection. Designers do not buy by collection. They piece it together, and we just design when creativity hits us.

Describe the palette of materials you work with.

Scott Baker: We work with renewable hardwoods from America, almost exclusively walnut and white oak. Currently, we get a lot of our wood from a small, family-run mill in Illinois.

MH: The core material is wood, and our secondary material is cast bronze. We do upholstery in-house, and we do caning. We also have a bit of Lucite and stone. Everything that is outsourced is done locally.

What’s next for you?

SB: I think we’re pretty much the only furniture maker in this category that has a six-axis robot—it’ll carve just about anything we can imagine. This isn’t going to replace anybody, though. It just allows us to do things that would otherwise be four times the cost or physically dangerous.

MH: Someone once told us our furniture line is a manifestation of a marriage of opposites. I believe having the handcrafted and robotic elements are just another manifestation of that. This is our brand: It’s current, but it also has a great lineage and tie to the past.