Matthias Pliessnig

Matthias Pliessnig is an acclaimed furniture designer based in Providence, Rhode Island whose work uses steam bent wood. His style is "kinetically contemporary" and he uses "computer-aided curves with laborious craftsmanship" to handcraft chairs and benches.

Pliessnig is a graduate of Rhode Island School of Design and the University of Wisconsin (Madison). His interest in woodworking developed after he decided to build a boat and was inspired to apply those techniques, particularly steam bending of wood strips around a mold, to furniture making. Plessing's 2003 Shell is made of laminated mahogany wood strips around a concrete form. His work Bends is a bowed bench made from a grid of wood that "gives way to support the sitter".

In 2010, he was named a fellow by United States Artists.