In response to a New York Times article written by Alice Rawsthorn in March about the downfall of the American furniture design industry, our friends over at I.D. were kind enough to send along word of Aric Chen's piece for the magazine, getting together not just Rawsthorn, but a whole slew of prominent designers working in the US to get to the bottom of her statements. What transpires is just a fantastic conversation between the group, with some on the defensive about the industry here and others admitting that there certainly are some sad truths to what Rawsthorn has said. So if ever you wanted to read some of a "state of the union" about current furniture design, consider this your gold mine. Here's a bit from Rawsthorn's opening statement, sort of summarizing what she'd meant to say in her NY Times piece:

My New York Times column sprang from many conversations with friends in the U.S. design scene over the years. What interested me as a non-American was that so much U.S. design is flourishing. Look at graphics, new media, games, typography - America sports world-class designers in all of those disciplines, as well as Apple as an exemplar of corporate design management, and One Laptop Per Child as a stellar example of humanitarian design. Why wasn't the U.S. achieving the same high standards in furniture?