Matthias Pliessnig Furniture – Following The Natural Curve
by Leonora Oppenheim, London, UK on 01.24.07
We saw some images on DesignBoom this week of a beautiful curved wooden form in construction. The pictures were of the furniture designer Matthias Pliessnig’s work in progress. Intrigued by these workshop images TreeHugger decided to contact him to find out more about his work. Matthias tells us that he is currently working on his masters project in Furniture Design and Sculpture at the University of Wisconsin. “My current work is exploring combinations of boat building and furniture building skills to create objects that celebrate wood as a material and asks questions of function.” Having started out working with metal he changed to woodwork several years ago and has appreciated the more malleable and supple nature of this natural material ever since. He says, “Naturally, furniture became my vehicle due to the intimacy of interaction and the challenges of structure with form.” We love his interpretations of boat building techniques in beautifully formed seating which flows into the space it occupies.
We were also happy to learn that Matthias is working with domestic woods that are harvested in the US. He explains, “Two years ago, I moved to Wisconsin and began using wood that is harvested here by local arborsists. The trees that are cut down are from crowded forests that need more sun for the younger trees to grow healthy. I believe wood is a great renewable resource when grown and harvested correctly. I certainly do not support rainforest woods or clear-cutting.“ Matthias has used the steam bending process in much of his work, but his new pieces including Deviated Path (pictured above) use the natural bend of the wood. He says he seeks out solar or air-dried rather than kiln dried wood as it is less brittle and it “bends nicely”. “This search led me to some great locals that used the slower processes of drying the wood. Ideally, I look for air-dried wood that has been drying for one year or so, but the solar dried wood works great too.” Matthias uses a water-based non-toxic epoxy glue to hold the wooden structures together. You can see more of Matthias’s furniture on his website as well as examples of his beautiful wooden sculptural pieces. Thanks for talking to us Matthias. ::Matthias Pliessnig
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The seat pictured above seems to be incredibly wasteful. He uses about 5 times the material that is really needed to create furniture that is impractical. I thought this was supposed to be an environmental friendly blog not a post modern interior design blog. Sure his sources maybe renewable but just because they are renewable doesn't mean they may be use impractically and exhaustively. An entire dinette set could have been made out of the material he used to make that one seat.
yeah, and come to think of it, the imperial palace in japan is incredibly wasteful. and the pyramids. thanksgiving dinner is wasteful too! oh, and these computers you and i are using to put messages up, they are also wasteful.
In response to a comment:
First, these projects require far less wood needed to make a dinette set. Deviated path was made with two boards of Ash (barely enough to make one small coffee table) and the other pieces made of strips also use very little wood. The strips are all 3/8" squared providing the best yeild of material. Strips like these are normally considered scrap in most woodshops. Each piece weighs less than 15lbs... how much wood do you think that is?
-Matthias Pliessnig
I really like the design and have used it as a point of reference in a current project. There is nothing wastefull with using cuts of wood that would have been chucked and it is a beautifull piece of design.
David Trubridge has been working on furniture of this nature for quite some time now. He was trained as a naval architect and applied that knowledge to furniture making.
http://www.davidtrubridge.com/