TODD COOPER
“One woman
came up to
me at last
year’s fair and
said she’d had
her pillow
chair for
23 years,”
Bokich says.
“Her son used
to bring the
whole football
team home
and they’d
take turns
jumping off
the stairs into
it. She says it
still looks
good.”
Sinking into Softness
Robb’s Pillow Furniture invites rest.
I
f you’ve ever been to the Oregon Country Fair,
you know Robb Bokich’s wares. He’s at booth
number 73, and when you’re that far down on the
loop, hot, dusty, and tired, Robb’s Pillow
Furniture is so inviting, you just have to sink
yourself into it.
There is a time limit for sitting though, says Bokich’s
wife, Emily Wille. “Robb’s better at telling people than I
am,” she says. “He’ll gently tell someone time’s up for sit-
ting and to come back later.”
Bokich has been selling his pillow furniture at the
Country Fair for 30 years. What makes his furniture unique
is his process of working with the foam. He invented and
patented the way it’s cut.
“The way I cut it makes it different in size, shape and
texture than that used in other filling, and because of that it
creates more airspace around itself, giving each chair
incredible support,” he says. The foam is cut to produce
many edges, which not only makes it malleable to each per-
son’s shape, but also prevents it from breaking down over
time.
Bokich covers each piece of furniture — love seats, rain-
drop chairs, futons, pillows and footrests — with high qual-
ity upholstery made of nylon fibers so tightly woven they
don’t absorb dirt.
“One woman came up to me at last year’s fair and said
she’d had her pillow chair for 23 years,” Bokich says. “Her
son used to bring the whole football team home and they’d
By Aria Seligmann
take turns jumping off the stairs into it. She says it still looks
good.”
He demonstrates how to refluff and sit in the furniture
inside his workspace at 1851 River Road (which also hous-
es Wille’s Lavendar Corner gift shop).
“Here, try this,” he says, as he tugs and prods at each
piece. “Now it’s a chair; now it’s a loveseat. Lift up your
feet,” he says as he places a matching footrest under your
feet, a pillow behind your head, and another pillow on your
lap. “Now you’ve got a reading desk,” he laughs.
The chairs are so comfortable and supportive they take
tension away from the back, creating a feeling of floating.
As he moves around showing off his furniture and point-
ing out different types of upholstery, Bokich has a notice-
able limp and uses only one arm. At age 16, he was asleep
in the back seat of a car when it was struck by a drunk driv-
er. He came out of a coma three months later, with limited
brain function and no feeling on the left side of his body. His
14-year-old sister was killed in the crash; the driver had her
legs severed. The drunk driver and his passenger were both
killed.
“In an instant, that split decision made by that driver, that
choice he made, affected so many lives,” says Bokich.
Despite the severity of his injury, Bokich left home on
his own a year after the accident and traveled around the
world. “I learned to speak again in the Philippines,” he says.
He then came to Oregon to go to school, earning his bache-
lor’s in psychology and master’s in counseling.
But while in school, he needed to support himself finan-
cially, and no one would hire him with his disability. Then he
saw someone making big pillows and wanted to give it a try.
“He said, ‘Oh you can’t do this, it takes two hands.’”
Bokich laughed at him.
“The doctors told my parents I wouldn’t live. Then they
told me I would never walk again. I told the guy, ‘I think I
can handle making pillows.’”
He sold his first pillow furniture at Saturday Market in 1973
and has been sewing ever since. His inventory has grown to be
broader
and
to
serve
the
desires
of
his
customers. From the first raindrop chair designs to the more
recent futons and raindrop beds, everything is custom made.
After 12 years of making pillow furniture, someone from
a hospital in Idaho saw it and was so impressed with the
comfort, he asked Bokich to make beds for his patients.
Bokich spent another three years designing and testing a
higher level of foam to be used for medical furniture. “For
a person who’s physically damaged, the most important
thing is to be able to sleep comfortably,” says Bokich.
A clinic in Illinois has also started to use his furniture for
clients undergoing occupational therapy. The therapist can
sit in the furniture with the client, or the client can relax sit-
ting alone, says Bokich. “One therapist said he’s never seen
his clients come into therapy smiling before.”
Bokich’s eyes light up when he talks about helping oth-
ers. “It’s an exciting thing to give someone comfort and
joy.”
ew
JULY 8, 2004 11