Out of the Woods: Adventures of Twelve Hardwood Chairs

Yet much of people's experience of objects is limited to seeing them in a momentary state of perfection, on a shop shelf or in a magazine. It is a snapshot in the life of a product that has come to dominate the whole process of designing, and its production and its robustness, is scarcely ever communicated. The unfortunate effect of this is that the very real environmental cost that every manufactured object incurs is hidden from view.

From the collaboration between the American Hardwood Export Council (AHEC) and the Royal College of Art Design Product in London, borns this interesting project, Out of the Woods, with the wood as main element. The initial approach is to design and produce a wooden chair, exploring the material, from every face of its creation, bringing it to the limit.

In parallel with this deep study and once the prototypes have been designed, a new approach borns, leaving aside the materiality and the science.Some of the best writers in UK were asked to write pieces inspired by the project. Each has produced a poem or short story about a different chair. Their work culminates in a new publication, designed by RCA Communications students Fabienne Hess and Livia Lima and project managed by Harry Richardson.

The authors are: Tiffany Murray, Jenny Valentine, Damian Barr, Luke Wright, Joe Dunthorne, Tiffany Atkinson, Gillian Clarke, Sarah Salway, Stella Duffy and Aminatta Forna.

Below are some of these pieces.
 

OUT OF THE WOODS. Tiffany Atkinson.

comes the hand
and its delicate fretwork;
how little a man needs
to carry his weight in the end.

Perhaps it's a dud summer
ans rain has run all afternoon
the white length of his forearm;
perhaps he is sickened or lost

or his house repossessed
or the world has burned down
to a barrow of ashes and bone
or the guests have rolled up

unexpected in breakable outfits
and there is nowwhere safe to sit.
Quickened with need he will crib
from the compound tense od wood

a single unfoldable rune for still
flight, one for each soul in its
hobble of flesh; and this is how
whole new cities flower overnight.
 

THE FLOATING CHAIR. Gillian Clarke.

Remembering wind in the white oaks
I plant my chair in a wilderness, settle in neat
as a lark's nest in a cleft crushed in the grass
under buzzard and crow, th wind-blown flocks
of curlew, clouds, ideas, words.

Remembering cherries shaking foam from their hair.
I launch my chair on a wave for the spray on my page,
the taste of salt, the snap of a sail,
words homing in paragraphs over the sea,
a silver leap from the depths.

Rememberings

ongs of chainsaw, chisel, plane,
I float my chair on a floor smooth as a lake,
its mind on reflections. I consider carpenters, makers,
hands silking the wood. A stipple of thought
surfaces like a trout, a tug on the line.
 

NEW CHAIR. Jenny Valentine.

My ghost can't touch it, but I can.
The day I bring the chair home, I know he is watching. I don't see him but I know he is there. He is always there.
He stays in the dark room with it when I go upstairs to sleep, and he wakes me, just before morning, for an explanation.
I have brought something new into the house. I have brought somehing he can't touch because he has never touched it, and has no memory of how it once felt.
It is the only thing here that he has never put his hands on. It is the first new thing I have bought since his death.
Alive when he was, young at the same time, and now both changed. The ash tree to his chair, the man to an echo, a presence, a just-leaving of the room.
 

Phyllida Bench. Luke Wright Poem. Out of the Woods: Adventures of Twelve Hardwood Chairs. Photography © Petr Krejci.
 

Here are the links to all the ‘Out of the Woods: Adventures of 12 hardwoods Chairs’ videos, we also include the link to the ‘Infinity Bench’ video which was one of the 10 benches displayed for ‘Bench Years’ at the V&A:
 

Overview: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8xFuV5rdfg&feature=plcp

Floating & Folded: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ps2Od_hM_4U

Leftovers & Phyllida: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvEJoAMBTn4

Well Proven & Beeeench: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjZYa3Ziffg&feature=plcp

Num.4 & Designed Legacy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=519WKNJo5EM&feature=plcp

Squeeze & Solitude: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKpISRLQAtA&feature=plcp

Tree Furniture  Snelson: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGeib3h-Neg&feature=youtu.be

Life Cycle Analysis in Practice: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leUZ-sMpijs&feature=plcp

12 Students: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qljuqvkZrM

Infinity Bench: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmEqZTypzoY&feature=relmfu