I was project manager for “Innovative Technologies in the Design and Manufacture of High Value Furniture and Wood Products from Microwave-modified Wood” - a bit of a mouthful I know - one of the projects in the Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) for Wood Innovations. As part of that project, my two PhD students from the project, Lotars Ginters (an industrial designer/lecturer), Ross Annels (a designer/craftsman from Queensland) and I mounted an exhibition: “Holzdesign Australien - Wissenschaft im Atelier. Wood Design Australia - Science in the Studio”, in Mainz Germany. The name of the exhibition obviously alludes to the connections we were able to investigate between traditional woodcraft/furniture making and high-technology, microwave wood softening and bending.
We each contributed a series including:
a cabinet - small, horizontal or vertical
a small table - suitable for any one or more of a variety of uses
a chair – of the approximate size and scale of a dining chair
a free standing lamp
The items were to be produced principally from one or more, of four varieties of solid timber:
• Queensland Silver Ash
• Queensland Silky Oak
• Spotted Gum
• Sydney Blue Gum
Each set of four works was to comprise a ‘family’ of products.
My works utilized a favourite theme of mine - Teraphim ).
The Teraphim – a set of four zoomorphic domestic works
Queensland Silky Oak and Queensland Silver Ash, with bent components, Aluminium, Steel, Electrical Fittings.
Definition of Teraphim: idols or images reverenced by the ancient Hebrews and kindred peoples, apparently as household gods.
Collecting objects for our homes represents much more than assembling the necessities for living. The domestic ritual of homemaking, the assembling of items into a narrative of personal and social space, sits within a story about oneself.
The zoomorphic sections of these works attach themselves to geometric forms – benign protective spirits invited to contribute to our stories – both that of the designer/maker and that of the user.
Three works have already been taken up into public collections:
the CRC Chair into the National Gallery of Victoria;
the CRC Table into the Castlemaine Art Gallery and Historical Museum,
the CRC Cabinet into the Hamilton Art Gallery.