About Oso Industries

Photo by Ken Missbrenner

Oso Industries is a design studio that focuses on new applications of concrete for furniture. Using designs inspired by urban living, sculptor and founder Eric Weil individually hand crafts multifunctional, mobile furniture featuring concrete and other new materials to create clean, geometric forms.

Eric graduated from Oberlin College where he studied sculpture. After studying woodcarving in Ghana, where he was inspired by traditional furniture design, he moved to New York City and worked in a series of manufacturing jobs that used sculpting and mold-making processes. Through these experiences, Eric learned to work with castable materials like concrete, and began experimenting with techniques for coloring it and shaping it into new curvaceous forms. Recognizing concrete's untapped potential for use in design, Eric decided to use this adaptable material to create a furniture line and in 2002, he founded Brooklyn's Oso Industries.

First introducing the Rollerboy in 2003, and following with its many offspring, Oso Industries has been pushing the combination of mobility, multifunctionality and creative use of materials. Many pieces blur the line between furniture types: chair and ottoman, bench and table, desk and shelf. Oso Industries creates pieces to customer-specified parameters of color, finish and dimension, and continues to find new uses for concrete both by itself and in concert with other materials such as bamboo, rubber, glass and aluminum.