- Art & Design
In 2024, designer and maker Zack Nestel-Patt founded his practice, Ah Um Studio. From his workshop in Los Angeles, he develops furniture that seeks engagement and is intended to age through daily use. Wear, touch and time are not by-products, but essential components of the design.
The studio takes its name from Mingus Ah Um, the iconic album by North American bassist and pianist Charles Mingus, and this musical reference is far from incidental. Nestel-Patt spent many years building a career as a jazz and classical bassist, and later as an indie rock musician. That experience continues to shape his way of thinking: furniture, like music, exists through tension, rhythm and repetition. He views design as a form of improvisation, in which intuition and experimentation are at least as important as technical mastery. 
Musical detour
Nestel-Patt’s route into furniture design did not follow a conventional educational path. After years of touring from New York, he moved to California, where an unexpected part-time job in a workshop producing wooden cremation urns introduced him to woodworking. That experience, followed by work in the studio of a fellow musician and furniture maker, led to a rapid yet intense learning curve. Within a few months, his initial curiosity grew into a full-time practice. This relatively unconventional beginning partly explains the openness of his work. Ah Um Design Studio resists rigid ideas of luxury and instead opts for furniture that adapts to the lives of its users. Each object carries an embedded ‘emotional texture’: a layering that brings the making process, as well as the feelings and thoughts behind each design, to the surface.
Ah Um Design Studio vermijdt bewust een overdreven con- ceptuele benadering en zet in op een sterke emotio- nele meerwaarde
Design with a twist
This approach takes concrete form in the Jura Collection, the studio’s first complete furniture collection. Its origins are strikingly intimate. The first pieces were designed for the maker and his wife, specifically for their own home in Los Angeles. The living room became a laboratory in which contrasts were deliberately explored: sharp lines set against soft materials, and simple volumes offset by small, idiosyncratic details. One of these early pieces attracted attention after being shared via Not Normal Market LA, a platform dedicated to the resale of furniture. That moment marked the beginning of Jura as a collection and of Ah Um Design Studio as a brand. The initial series was launched in 2024, with the full realisation of the collection following in 2025 during NYCxDesign. The expanded collection includes various types of chairs and tables, as well as a lamp, mirror and plinth. Jura is defined by geometric incisions, pronounced textures and a carefully considered interplay of materials. Joints are not concealed, surfaces remain legible, and each object bears traces of the making process. Ah Um Design Studio deliberately avoids an overly conceptual approach, instead emphasising strong emotional value.
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Photography by Ryin Rosenberg
Text by Carolien Depamelaere