HARI GORDON & MARCO BELLINI
THE WARM TOUCH OF WOOD.
British designer Hari Gordon works with wood to create pieces of furniture that call to be touched. With a strong focus on sustainability, Gordon aims to create pieces of furniture that will be loved for many years, an antidote to the throw-away culture that has become the norm.
An adventurer by nature, Gordon aims to combine a love of making with a love of the wild.
“I’ve always sought ways to combine my passion for the outdoors with my passion for woodwork,” he explains. “These connections can be found in the shapes and textures of what I make, aimed to echo elements of nature.”
The selection of work included in the Cluster online exhibition is titled Origins and is inspired by an adventure that took Gordon camping alongside rivers and amongst the raw landscapes of East Africa, Scandinavia and India. Gordon returned to his UK workshop inspired to recreate the textures and forms he had seen.
“The contours of the Ripple table in this exhibition emulate the sculptural rocky forms I was living amongst.”
One of Gordon’s concerns as a maker is the proliferation of cheap and lightweight plastic objects. He aims to combat this by creating pieces that are natural and sturdy and made with materials that call for the attention and touch of the viewer or owner. Wood, he explains, has a certain enticing weight to it.
In order to keep his footprint as a maker as low as possible, Gordon’s materials are sourced from factory offcuts and he makes many of the finishes himself from environmentally friendly materials. He hopes that anyone who buys his work will do so with the intention of passing the piece down through generations.
Gordon’s work stays true to the natural colours of the wood, showing off the natural grains and hues of the material itself.
“There is an openness to outcome,” Gordon explains. “The grain will never quite look how you anticipate. The form is often decided half by me, half by the wood I am working with.”
Gordon focuses much of his time in the workshop on creating textures that invoke memories of places and can transport you back to nature.
“This was my whole concept with texturing in this project really – bridging a gap from the home interior to the great outdoors.
“A lot of the pieces were made with the intention of translating a sense of calm into fluid, soft forms,” explains Gordon. “Nature continues to be my greatest inspiration, teacher and friend. I hope my project brings people some joy and inspires them to celebrate and care for our beautiful world.”
Cedrus Deodara
Italian craftsman Marco Bellini came to wood after taking a year out from a long career in computers to travel the world. He has been learning about the material for almost a decade, founding his own studio in 2016. The interest in wood, however, stems from deep in his childhood: his grandfather taught him to work with wood when he was a young boy.
In his work as a designer, Bellini aims to celebrate the casual collaboration between maker and material, allowing for spontaneity in the process.
“I love the fact that wood is unpredictable,” says Bellini. “But if you dedicate yourself to a single type of wood – let's say, walnut or oak – for years, you can start understanding what it will do under specific conditions like fire, sun or wind.”
Bellini’s pieces celebrate the natural colours of the wood, occasionally shaded by a lick of flame against its surface or left exposed to age.
Evocazione #1
Juglans Regia
The pieces available on Cluster’s online shop are part of a line of enquiry that Bellini is pursuing as a maker into hollowed forms and sculptural pieces. The pieces named Cedrus Deodara and Juglans Regia, gourd-like and round in shape, are both hollowed out inside and burned with fire on the inside. The Triptych sculpture, on the other hand, features three elongated shapes that were left to take on a natural hue in the sun for a month.
Bellini hopes that his work instils in the viewer a sense of awe that can be found in nature.
“I hope my work gives people the desire to stay still and be in silence,” says Bellini. “Just like when you're in a glade in the woods or in front of a huge old tree. Observing, silently, and thinking a bit about why you're staying silent.”
Thank you for reading,
Katie De Klee & Cluster Team.