Luggagetures began in 1996, born out of a wood shop I had already built — at the time, my company was designing and manufacturing memorabilia display cases for the entire sports collectibles industry. With the infrastructure already in place, I saw an opportunity to create something the market had never seen before: a piece of furniture that wasn't really furniture at all, but functional art.
Every piece started with the same foundation — half-inch high-end plywood, cut and joined by hand into sculptural forms. From there, the work transformed into something extraordinary. Each piece was hand-painted by my collaborating artist Joseph Somers, whose whimsical, eclectic, and deeply colorful style turned cases, chests, and tables into living characters. The drawer interiors were lined with rich, vibrant materials — collectible-grade detail you only discovered when you opened them.
I made the strategic decision to place these pieces only in high-end art galleries across the United States — never in furniture stores. That single decision changed everything. By positioning them as collectible art rather than furniture, the market responded accordingly: average pieces sold for $19,000, with select pieces reaching $50,000.
Over the years I created more than twenty original designs — Traveling in Class, Hat Around, Domino Affair, Sitting Work, To Thee I Sing, In Your Face, and dozens more. Each had its own personality, its own edition size, and its own collectors waiting.
The commissions that followed read like a who's who: a major Wolfgang Puck installation, the Disney-themed Our Days piece, custom hospitality work, and one-of-a-kind sculptures for private collectors across the country.
Luggagetures is still alive today. We continue to produce select pieces for collectors who want something no one else owns — original, hand-painted, structurally sound functional art that doubles as a story. From the wood shop to the gallery floor, every Luggageture starts the same way: a raw plywood prototype, then a transformation.
