Devon Turnbull, the audio designer behind OJAS, now has a furniture line, and it is made by one of Japan's great wood workshops. Karimoku Furniture has announced Oto no Kagu By OJAS and Karimoku Furniture, a new brand whose name translates as furniture of sound. The launch collection of 15 pieces goes on sale Thursday, October 22 at Karimoku dealers across Japan, according to Karimoku's press release.
Speakers, taken apart and rebuilt as furniture
The idea is simple and kind of brilliant. Turnbull took the design logic he uses for OJAS speakers (proportion, material, structure and geometric form) and rebuilt it as things you sit on and live with. Speaker panels became the seat and back of a chair, and the cabinet became its architectural frame. Karimoku describes the result not as a chair that quotes a speaker, but as furniture that shares the same thinking: very few elements, honest materials, structure in plain view, and proportion doing the heavy lifting.
It started with a single chair Turnbull designed for the 2021 exhibition Not For Sale at 909 Gallery. The collection took shape this year through KARIMOKU RESEARCH, the company's co-creation project, during Survey 03: FORM FOLLOWS FEELINGS, which ran from February to June 2026. Chair 001 came first, and the rest of the line grew out of it.
Built for the listening room
Every piece has a job in a room built around sound. Chair 001 works as a system, with or without arms and with long bench units that link together. A floor chair and low table, suited to a tatami room, come straight from Turnbull's second home in Tokyo and the sound house set up at the Survey 03 venue. Shelving 001 is made as a stand for turntables and tube amps, sized so LPs fit and strong enough to carry the weight when units are stacked. The Acoustic Panel OJ1 takes its form and role from the byobu folding screen. It stands on its own, so you can set it by a wall to tame reflections or use it to carve a listening corner out of a larger room.
The palette is two finishes, Pewter Gray and Pure Oak, on oak throughout. Pewter Gray is Turnbull's signature speaker color, and for this project it was newly mixed so the wood grain still shows through. Karimoku lists Chair 001 at 540 by 740 by 630 millimeters, Shelving 001 at 1778 wide, and the Acoustic Panel OJ1 at 1800 tall, sold as a set of two.
See it in Tokyo
From October 22 to December 29, The Conran Shop Daikanyama hosts a pop-up called Shadow, Light & Sound in its basement level, set up as a full listening room. It pairs Oto no Kagu with OJAS Tokyo speakers (the Sanjo, Rokujo and Nurikabe models, with cabinets made by Karimoku in the same two finishes) and pieces from wagetsu, Karimoku's brand with Los Angeles design studio WAKA WAKA. The shop is open 11 to 6, until 7 on Saturdays, and closed Wednesdays.
Our call
This one is Surfacing. Turnbull's sound systems have been shown at SFMOMA and the Cooper Hewitt, and seeing that same logic in a chair, a record shelf and a folding acoustic screen is the hi-fi furniture story of the fall. If you are in Tokyo before the end of the year, the Daikanyama listening room is the move.
Building your own setup? Start with our guide to finding a real listening bar, then our picks for powered speakers for turntables. For another chair with serious listening credentials, read the Eames Lounge Chair explained.
