For the upcoming Agathus showroom, designer and furniture maker Cody Campanie will present a series of custom works made for the space. Based in Portland, Cody leads Campagna, a studio where architecture and craft merge into a single practice of making by hand. His furniture reflects his belief that design should be both thoughtful and tactile, rooted in daily ritual and the quiet gestures of human life.
Cody’s path began in architecture, but he soon found himself wanting to close the distance between drawing and doing. “I wanted to think [of] an idea and have it in my hands within a day,” he says. This desire for immediacy defines his work, where form is discovered through making rather than imposed from above. He begins with observations on the world around him, such as the light across a building, the rhythm of a meal, and the way a hand rests on wood. His pieces carry those impressions into physical form, becoming part of the spaces where people gather and connect.
Travel is central to Cody’s process. He speaks of finding small vignettes in the world — “the way a gutter falls off a roof in Japan, or how books are stacked on a sidewalk in Rome” — and translating those fleeting images into structural or textural details.
The credenza he is crafting for Agathus, for instance, takes inspiration from the handle of a cast-iron pot he once saw in Kanazawa, while the edge of his dining table is shaped after an Egyptian burial amulet he encountered at the Met. “It’s scaled up so your hand fits into it, almost like shaking hands across time,” he explains. These gestures are quiet, but they carry the memory of touch and history within them.
Cody’s furniture is not meant to be observed from a distance. “I don’t see my pieces as art objects,” he says. “They’re functional, made to be lived with and marked by use.” His dining tables, in particular, embody this philosophy. “The table I grew up eating on was my grandparents’. The idea that my daughter could grow up around one I made, and one day pass it on, that kind of continuity means something.” For him, objects serve as artifacts of memory. They are the living archives that preserve the traces of those who touch them.
Over time, Cody has come to understand that every project is as much about endurance as it is about outcome. “The product isn’t the project; the process is,” Cody reflects. Each day spent sanding, shaping, and repairing builds not just the object, but the maker. The slow, repetitive nature of his work becomes a meditation on patience and imperfection. “Sometimes a last-minute fix ends up being the most creative moment,” he says. “You learn to adapt, to work with what the material gives you.”
At his studio in Portland, our team saw how Cody’s work grows through his connection with materials, geography, and the people who build alongside him. Portland’s network of craftspeople — metalworkers, upholsterers, and stone fabricators — expands his vocabulary beyond wood, and his conversations with peers and clients shape the meaning of each piece. “It’s amazing what a collective group of people can put into one object,” he says. Every commission becomes a dialogue, a shared story between maker and owner. “When someone sends a photo of their dog sleeping under one of my tables, it reminds me that these pieces have a life beyond the studio.”
As Cody’s pieces come together for the Agathus showroom, they carry the same sense of care and intention that defines his practice. Displayed with other artists’ work, they offer a window into the thoughtful process behind every object. Experience his pieces in person at our upcoming showroom in Costa Mesa, set to open early next year.
Explore more of his work at campagna.cc