One of my favorite materials, especially in the last few years, is wood.
Being a natural material, wood reflects something basic, simple and warm, and it can easily look rustic. But I actually like the contrast between the natural material and clean geometric lines and its use in unconventional and innovative designs, a trend that has swept the design world in the last few years.
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| wooden bicycle |
In the past few years you can find wood in places you would have never thought to look for it. It is still the most common material used in the furniture design scene, but nowadays it can also be spotted in fashion design, technological design and other unconventional scenes.
If I could, I would wrap all my gadgets in wood…
In my eyes, good design is that which presents some “out of the box” thinking. I love to see new designs that take a material and challenge it, giving it characteristics that don’t originally portray it.
Ray and Charles Eames, the legendary designers from the 40’s of the last decade, played with wood and bent it. They actually gave wood new character by bending and rounding it, a feature that did not originally exist. This new ability created stunning designs from wood, that were not possible to achieve before that.
There is something about the look of wood that sends out the exact message I like: cleanliness, minimalism and accuracy. Besides these features, I believe that wood tends to blend harmoniously with many other materials and colors, making it one of my favorite materials to combine into my jewelry.
In my designs I use wood in light tones as well as dark tones (walnut). I feel that the light tones portray something young and somewhat mischievous, and combine beautifully with pastel colors that I deeply adore.
The dark tone of the wood, on the other hand, reflects a more elegant message.
When designing my Northern Lights Collection, I felt it’s time to go back to my original profession as an industrial designer and focus on new home decor pieces. The natural place to start with was related to jewelry, and so I designed a small series of jewelry holders and stands that were made of (unsurprisingly) – wood.
Recently I added a new wall mounted deer head to the series, which is simply a home decor piece.
I really love this series. It combines my favorite material with the deer shape, which has been following me for quite a while now.
I can get totally immersed spending hours looking for wooden designs that pay respect to this material, and so I gathered some of my favorites in a cool Pintrest board dedicated to this topic. Want to get immersed too?
Come and have a look.
