A graduate-level spring course examined how domestic interiors reflect the social, cultural, and technological forces of their time.
RISD Faculty Member Chris Specce Named Schiller Family Endowed Chair in Furniture Design
Image
Longtime RISD faculty member Chris Specce 01 ID was recently named Schiller Family Endowed Chair in Furniture Design. The position was created in 2016 thanks to a generous donation from former RISD Trustee Kim Gassett-Schiller and Phil Schiller in recognition of the quality education their son Erik Schiller 14 FD received in RISD’s Furniture Design department. The inaugural chair, John Dunnigan MFA 80 ID/P 22, held the position for nine years before retiring in 2025.
“I’m humbled and really grateful for the support and the recognition,” says Specce. “I want to thank the Schillers and also people like [President Emerita] Rosanne Somerson [76 ID] , Peter Dean [77 AR] , Jim Cole, and of course John, who—together—built the Furniture Design department from the ground up and were important mentors to me.”
The endowment supports Specce’s research and creative practice and also benefits the department as a whole, as well as the Architecture + Design division at RISD. “It allows the department to do things that would otherwise be impossible,” Specce says. “We’ve used it in the past to hire post-MFA teaching fellows, purchase equipment, and cover travel expenses like those incurred when we ran a partnered studio with Herman Miller in 2023 and flew a bunch of students out to Michigan to conduct research in their archives.”
Image
Image
Specce says that the department—which is relatively young, with the first graduates earning their degrees in 1999—has “undergone a thoughtful and deliberate evolution over the years” but is still focused on teaching students to make objects at scale by hand. “The curriculum asserts that learning to make things gives you a unique understanding of structure and form, functionality, and materials,” he explains.
“Combining that emphasis on craft with RISD’s liberal arts curriculum teaches students to engage critically with ideas and issues that are culturally important, which leads to an expansive view of the world,” he adds. Furniture Design students also participate in off-campus design exhibitions like the International Contemporary Furniture Fair in New York City and Milan Design Week, which introduces them to industry professionals and helps them to see their own designs in a broader context.
Image
Image
Specce’s design practice ranges from commercial, client-focused products to more experimental, expressive work. Since 2015 he has been a co-leader of Furnishing Utopia, a global collective of designers who have produced and exhibited original works in response to immersive research on specific design movements, most notably the Shakers. His work with the collective is featured in an upcoming exhibition at the Milwaukee Art Museum focused on the 18th–19th century utopian movement called The Shakers: A World in the Making.
Maintaining his own studio in parallel with his teaching practice, Specce says, enables him to practice what he preaches. “But it also goes the other way,” he notes. “There’s so much interest at RISD in the idea of objects as culture, and that has really influenced my work and expanded my practice.”
Simone Solondz / portrait by Kaylee Pugliese
July 21, 2026
Related Stories
A mix of Furniture Design and Architecture students, the class is designing and building furniture pieces that reference Kahn’s love of geometric forms and natural light.
From the Furniture Design department’s Grounding Space exhibition at WANTED to participation in NYCxDESIGN events across the city, RISD work stood out at this year’s exposition.