Jeff Soderbergh is an Inductee into the 2025 New England Design Hall of Fame

Portrait by Bruce Rogovin

Photograph by Nicole Franzen

Photograph by Andrea Hansen

Photograph by David Hansen

Photograph by David Hansen

A table isn’t just a piece of furniture to Jeff Soderbergh. “It’s a place where we celebrate, mourn, and reflect on mundane moments,” he says. “It’s an integral part of a family’s memories.”

This is why his tables (and other custom furnishings) are more than utilitarian; they’re works of art. His materials: anything and everything organic. Soderbergh can look at nearly any discarded material and divine a new purpose for it. That knack has made Jeff Soderbergh Sustainable Furnishings & Fine Art into a full-service design/build furnishings company. Soderbergh’s studio is in Portsmouth, Rhode Island.

“For thirty-five years I’ve been making sustainable work with reclaimed materials and windfall trees,” says Soderbergh, “and really, it all started with a love of materials.” He saw beauty and potential in the unnoticed—in old barns, scrapyards, and construction sites. “In the beginning, I was a hero when I’d show up to a demo site and cart away unwanted materials,” he says.

A self-taught artist, Soderbergh says, “I learned everything at the library: how to weld, cut stone, use a table saw. It was in the days before YouTube.”

He evolved from an artist to an artist with answers. “When I started to get commissions from homeowners, designers, and architects, that’s when I focused on gearing the business toward custom solutions for the design industry,” Soderbergh says. He stores materials in several jam-packed warehouses, where they wait to become something else. There isn’t anything his team can’t fabricate out of wood, metal, and stone, he says.

And add one more credential to his resume: curator. Soderbergh is now representing the works of seventeen sustainable artists in two art galleries—one at his studio in Rhode Island and one in Wellfleet, Massachusetts. The designer, entrepreneur, and problem-solver says he is honored that his contributions to the design industry are being recognized by the New England Design Hall of Fame.