Showroom

>>> Jason Scott Collection  |  Phoenix, AZ

Jason Scott Forsberg at his Phoenix warehouse.

Keep your eyes peeled, and you’ll find the Jason Scott Collection of reclaimed teak furniture in numerous retailers and showrooms around our region, including Robb & Stucky stores, Slifer Designs in Edwards, Colorado; and American Home in Albuquerque and Santa Fe, New Mexico. The signature Jason Scott Collection itself features rich carvings, distressed finishes and a scale designed to complement grand custom homes and hospitality settings. The Urban Village collection has a modern, rustic appeal equally at home in urban lofts and mountain resort homes.

Though his products now can also be found around the country, 15 years ago, Jason Scott Forsberg was a restless young man with a backpack and a round-the-world airline ticket. After spending five years in the Los Angeles music scene, Forsberg opted for a bit of wander-lusting before heading to Minneapolis to live closer to family. He wound up in Indonesia, where he started buying up antique pieces to furnish his own house.

“I grew up in the furniture business, with my mother and sister being interior designers,” Forsberg explains. “When I was in Indonesia, though, I bought a lot of furniture and decided to open an antiques store in Minneapolis.”

Jason Scott Collection pieces are reassembled and finished in Phoenix before shipment.

Being a shopkeeper in Minnesota, he soon found out, didn’t agree with him. “I hated it,” he admits. “I didn’t want to sit in a store all day long. I wanted to travel.”

His sister had joined the design staff of Robb & Stucky in Arizona, and he discovered the store–and the region–had developed an affinity for ethnic furnishings. With her encouragement, he traveled back to Indonesia to get a container of antique furnishings for the retailer–and in his business was born.

Forsberg went deep into the small villages of Java and got to know the local culture, the craftspeople and sources for antiques. Before long, he realized a better business plan was to create new furnishings out of teak and mahogany wood reclaimed from old houses and commercial structures, which were being torn down in favor of more modern brick structures. “I wound up living in Java for eight years and learned to speak enough Indonesian to get by,” says Forsberg. He also married a Javanese woman. In 2004, after his first child was born, he and his family moved to Phoenix, where he established a 13,000-square-foot warehouse on the city’s west side.

Forsberg’s main facility is still in East Java, where he travels numerous times a year to oversee production by his 200 employees, who do everything from drive trucks to handle carving for his furnishings, which range from occasional tables, buffets, chairs and credenzas to coffee tables, beds and dining tables. The pieces are built by hand and kiln dried in Indonesia, then disassembled and shipped to Phoenix, where they are further dried, reassembled and finished before shipping.

In addition to selling his pieces to retailers via regional reps and through markets such as High Point and the Las Vegas Market, Forsberg will occasionally create custom furnishings for interior designers. He’s also interested in expanding his architectural market, having recently completed a commission for a custom home that included building shutters, kitchen cabinetry, moulding and even stair steps made out of the reclaimed teak. “I have a lot of architectural antiques in Indonesia, like shutters, doors and even structural elements of houses that architects would like,” he explains.

In the meantime, though, there’s a shipment that needs to go out, another container coming in from Indonesia and an upcoming trip to plan. “We try to spend six weeks in Indonesia during the summer months when my older son is out of school,” says Forsberg. Like Forsberg himself, his children, too, will soak up the local culture and crafts.

Jason Scott Collection, Phoenix, Arizona; (623) 337-6910 or www.jasonscottcollection.com.