the digital brochure.

Valcucine and Spotti present
WOOD MOOD.
10 POSSIBLE TALES
The selection gathers ten objects realized by designers that operate
outside the traditional practices of design, overtaking the concept of
wood intended in material and technological terms.
Ten works between object and vision to describe a research, vital and
poetic, related to the microscale of the project and of our lives.
Curator
Davide Fabio Colaci
with
Francesca Avian, Margherita Sanfelici
Graphic design
Luca Arrigoni
The curator wishes to thank all the designers and people that made this project possible.
1
BROCHES
Julia Walter / 2011
Born in Stuttgart (1979) , lives and works like indipendent artist in Amsterdam.
This series of pins originates from the impossibility of distinguish the
rarity of a refined object from its manufacturing process. What Julia
Walter realizes is a stream of spontaneous actions and unforeseen
reactions, matching, crystallizing and overlapping small wooden
pieces. Like wood-waste products, these unique pieces are immersed
in colored water, transforming the material in the only possible
incident. Material as precious and creative energy.
2
FJÄLLBJÖRK DIAMANT (Birch Diamonds)
Tom Chung / 2011
Born in Vancouver, lives and works like designer in Toronto, Canada.
With the simple action of carving, Tom Chung manufactures the most
precious object out of the most common and traditional Swedish
material. Cut by the Carl Malmsten School, the Birch Diamond,
with its wood-waste box, overturns the traditional ideas of luxury and
uniqueness with a new material expression of the object itself. This
diamond tells the story of a new (possible) ethical dimension of design
and craftsmanship.
Construction and fabrication were executed by Hannes Lundin, Kim
Sõderbergh, Lone Ohlin and Magnus Dahlén under the supervision of Leif
Burman.
3
WOODEN LIGHT BULB
Ryosuke Fukusada / 2009
Born in 1979 in Osaka, founded his own design studio in 2012 in Kyoto, Japan.
It’s from the traditional Japanese rokuro technique that Ryosuke
Fukusada has gained the idea of creating such a familiar and yet
extreme object.
A material bulb that lights up, unveiling the 2 millimeters thickness
hollowed out by the artisanal ritual work of patient and expert
Japanese craftsmen. It’s a story of art and vision, where the technical
quality is interiorized by the ethical and aesthetical one of a common
object.
4
ROLLWARE
Joanne Choueiri, Giulia Cosenza, Povilas Raskevicious / 2013
The designers are three students from the Master of Interior Architecture & Retail Design
(MIARD).
It’s a series of laser-cut rolling pins what the three young designers
from Rotterdam’s Piet Zwart Institute have conceived for the
production of bread-based tableware. The traditional wooden tool has
been modified to cut out sustainable and edible dish-shaped pieces of
dough, imprinting at the same time patterns and textures during the
use. It’s a history that merges tradition, material, rituality and creative
energy in the food-preparation process.
5
GLASSWOOD
Alexa Lixfeld / 2013
Alexa Lixfeld is a design studio, consultancy and production company,
based in Hamburg, Germany.
Combining blown glass with an oak wooden mold is a typical tradition
of a small central Bohemian village that has pushed Alexa Lixfeld to
celebrate an ancient and poetical practice.
During the glass-blowing process, the heat leaves a trace of the
contact between wood and glass creating a perfect union between
the two, thus recomposing the fracture of materials that have always
been separated. It’s a project described by its own manufacturing
process, where the old mold, always considered as a waste product, is
now the new base for the glass.
Glasswood is a new object that has always existed.
6
WOODEN FORMS
Peter Marigold / 2011
Peter Marigold (1974), lives and works as an independent designer in London.
It’s a series of moments and impressions what Peter Marigold returns
in the series of vases Wooden Forms. Wood is no longer the primary
element of the object but a sequence of gestures that include
wax and wooden pieces working as a mold. The modeling process
overlaps, repeats, moves and assembles multiple wax layers, poetically
leaving only the wood imprint. The result is a wax vase, unique and
unrepeatable that absorbs the wooden material excluding though its
presence.
7
TREE O’CLOCK
Raphaël Charles / 2013
Raphaël Charles (1979) is, by his own definition, a self-educated creator of object.
He lives in Bruxelles.
It’s not just a play on words what Raphaël Charles tells with his Tree
o’clock, but a poetical reconnaissance on time and materials.
The movement of a natural fracture in the wooden block counts the
passing time, the hours, the minutes and seconds of an ancestral
time sensible to the human rhythm. Tree o’clock is a possible tale
that speaks both about the dynamical and unperceivable qualities of
everyday life, as of the cosmic dimension of its existence.
8
MOKULOCK
Mokulock / 2012
Mokulock is a Japanese company specialized in wood recycling.
As Lego’s primary colors are deeply impressed in the memory of
each child playing with these popular and known bricks, an innovative
Japanese company has taken inspiration from the famous blocks
creating an environment-friendly version in wood without any kind
of varnishes. Compatible with the traditional Lego blocks, Mokulock
adds a biodegradable alternative to the plastic ones with the natural
shades of oak and birch wood.
9
DOUBLE MATCH
Paolo Ulian / 2001
Paolo Ulian (1961) lives and works in Italy. He‘s an inventor of “good” ideas.
It’s an ethical sense filled with poetry what Paolo Ulian visualizes
for his double-headed matchstick. Two sides ready to inflame that
duplicate the life of an common object, modifying the rituality of its
use. With a quick movement you can light it up but with care and
attention that match can also be kept for its next use. Double match
it’s an ethical and aesthetical consideration on behaviors, on materials
and on the sense of simple things.
10
DESIGN BY MAKING
Levi Dethier / 2013
Levi Dethier is a student from the Master of Product Design of ECAL
(Ecole cantonal d’art de Lausanne).
Guided by the idea of self-made, Levi Dethier tell us the story of
series of possible objects and instruments seen as intuitive design
elements. It’s an experience born from the material of broken
branches, worked in a simple and basic way that forces the project
and its creativity to confront themselves with manual work. Not the
refined and finished product, but a creative process where mind and
hand work and function together strengthening themselves with the
wooden material.