Meet the Maker Transforming Traditional Woodcraft with Resin
Artisan Djivan Schapira produces sculptural, candy-color furnishings by revolutionizing the longstanding techniques of French furniture making, restoration, and polishing
Born in France and now based in Union City, New Jersey, Djivan Schapira turns resin, end grain, and pine cones into sculptural furniture and accessories that live as comfortably in Louis Vuitton flagships as in collectible design galleries. At just 32, he has built a high-end, highly specialized practice out of techniques he learned in his father’s woodshop and radically evolved while in college.
Schapira was born in Paris, and raised “in the forest of the French countryside” before his family immigrated to New Jersey when he was six, eventually settling in Hoboken. The son of master craftsman Antoine Schapira, Djivan started apprenticing in woodshops at just ten years old, learning furniture making, restoration, and French polishing.
The latter ultimately became a meditative exercise. “It trained me to respect the time it can take to do things,” he says. “While I’m not the most patient person, something about that skill set puts me in a trance and I’ll just do it for hours.”
After high school in Hoboken, Schapira briefly studied architecture at the Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture at City College. During this time he had an epiphany: “I realized I didn’t really want to have to wait until I was in my 50s to get any kind of satisfaction from working as an architect,” he says. Instead, he leaned into what he already knew: traditional woodworking, restoration, and a growing curiosity about resin.
He transferred to Parsons School of to complete the architecture program “in a setting that had a little more emphasis on design,” but also, he readily admits, “to make connections, and get me closer to people that were already established.”
While still a junior, he launched his first company, ABDB Designs, with business partner Andrew James. Short for au bout du bois (the end of the grain), the company was founded on a technique rooted in his father’s 1987 piece “La Commode,” in which cross-cuts of wood were embedded in resin. According to Schapira, he spent “a full year of countless trial and error. So many resin brands, molds, failures” to refining the idea into a customizable, scalable process. The research and development eventually advanced his father’s approach into something he could apply to small accessories and, later, larger pieces.
During the pandemic, Schapira abandoned plans to launch smaller, accessories and instead developed a high-end body of work that became the series “Les Fleurs,” resulting in a solo show at High Line Nine Galleries in 2022. That visibility, and the larger-scale pieces it allowed him to show, helped him win awards and ultimately representation with Todd Merrill.
To this day, Schapira keeps his hands in every part of the process, while “constantly thinking of new ways to add to my craft,” he says. He still draws everything in 3D, sometimes makes foam mockups, and insists that “the only really solidifying idea is when it’s tangible and real.”
In addition to custom fabrication, he maintains a word-of-mouth restoration practice (he’s rejuvenated notable pieces including Steinway pianos, Nakashima furniture, and resin works by Gaetano Pesce). It might seem like a disparate endeavor, but the restoration projects tap into the same attention to detail and reverence for materials as his personal work.
“For me,” he says, “that’s where the love comes in. It’s being able to have a physical impact on the work that’s being made and not just drawing something and signing my name on it.”