Live from the Show Floor: Wallter

We've always admired the metal Slat Rack coat hanger by Wallter. At Dwell on Design, the Richmond, California–based design company debuted a new series of products: the Post, Wall, and Hang powder-coated spun aluminum planters. The owners, husband-wife team Max and Linda Geiser, launched the company in 2000 and continue to craft all the textiles themselves and have almost the rest of their collection fabricated two miles down the street. Dwell associate editor Miyoko Ohtake popped by the Wallter booth and chatted with Max about the company and the new pieces.

How did you meet?We both went to CCA in San Francisco. She did illustrations; I did furniture design. After school, Linda worked in textiles and I worked in a furniture store, then we started Wallter in 2000.What were your first products?We came up with the bedding first and did the onion bedspread, which is still our most popular product. We did textiles for almost five years and then came out with the wall decor.How do you decide what products to produce?A: We don’t have a list of what we want to do: now doorbells, now cups. The pots came out because I love cacti and little succulents. In the backyard, they can get lost or destroyed. The goal of the pots is to elevate them and put them on the wall or hang them from the ceiling. The goal is to emphasize the plants.When did you add the pots to the collection?We’re debuting them here at Dwell on Design. We’ve been working on them for a while with the idea that we’d show them first here at the conference.What are they made of?A: They’re powder-coated spun aluminum with drainage holes in the bottom. They’re for the outside but can be brought inside too if it gets too cold or frosty. We have the Post, Wall, and Hang planters and they come in four colors: orange, white, yellow, and light blue.Where are they made?They’re created outside the U.S. but then we finish and fabricate them here. We looked all over for a U.S. manufacturer but it was too expensive; no one would do the angled top cut for less than $30 a cut. All the other metalwork we do is made two miles from our studio in Richmond, California, and we make all the textiles ourselves. I prep and line them, and Linda sews them.