The finalists for the Niche 2009 awards have been announced, so we thought we’d highlight one designer in the furniture category, the art furniture builder based in Montreal, Alain Belanger. If you’re unfamiliar with Niche, it is the magazine for American and Canadian craft, and you can find lots of products therein that challenge the art/design divide. Christine is one of them.

Christine. Designed by Alain Belanger.

A chest of drawers conceived and made by Alain Belanger, Christine leans precariously, its drawers all different sizes, including the top drawer, which is a woodworking tour-de-force. One of a limited edition of 20, Christine stands 54″ high x 30″ large x 14″ deep. Comprised of solid wood, plywood, and veneer, the chest of drawers is rather accommodating, thanks to Belanger, who will personalize the finish per your desire.

The first Christine is a vibrant red, which somehow works to remind me of the Aspen Sofa-what with all the sinuous curves and carmine sexiness. I do not have access to Belanger’s thoughts, but I like to think he named this piece after the title girl in the Siouxsie & the Banshees song with the “kaleidoscope style” whose “personality changes behind her red smile.” Whether that’s my overactive imagination or not, the feminine-named Christine is certainly captivating. Belanger seems to make love to wood, caressing it into submission. He explains, “I love working with wood…feeling its generosity under my contemplative hands.” Christine’s sinuous curves do infer a pliability uncommon to the material; for the great majority of the material’s life, wood has been a solid with sharp angles. This is rapidly changing as designers discover the many ways to manipulate wood-see Spring Chair, for another example. Christine is actually so curvaceous that we might imagine her coming to life in our living rooms in archetypal Beauty and the Beast fashion.