Glimpt in Sudafrica e Vietnam

A Berlin DMY lo studio svedese ha presentato le ultime collezioni nate dalla collaborazione con artigiani locali di Città del Capo e Ho Chi Minh.

Mattias Rask e Tor Palm, alias Glimpt, sono due designer svedesi che collaborano con artigiani di tutto il mondo, creando oggetti ricchi di storie, al confine tra design e artigianato. A Città del Capo hanno lavorato con associazioni e artisti locali. Il risultato del loro lavoro è una collezione di prototipi: uno sgabello e una cassettiera facilmente smontabili e una lampada in ceramica decorata a mano e legno. Dopo il Sudafrica, la loro ricerca di Glimpt è proseguita in Vietnam insieme all'azienda di mobili UMA e agli artigiani di Ho Chi Minh City nel sud del Vietnam, mescolando ancora una volta design scandinavo e tradizioni locali.

Così, Mattias e Tor raccontano il loro lavoro (in inglese):

Before starting our exam project, we had long discussions about what we felt was important to us and about the ways we want to work. Since we are both very fond of handicraft and do a lot of woodwork ourselves, it felt natural to make handicraft the point of departure for our project. Our discussions revealed that we are more or less fed up with that part of today's designworld which is all about conceptualizing and creating products for a consumer society without involvement at a deeper level. In order to justify ourselves as designers we felt a need for our work to mean more than just that.

Il processo di lavorazione artigianale a Ho Chi Minh

This led us on to the idea of co-operating with craftsmen in poorer parts of the world, thus highlighting their handicraft and their cultural tradition and perhaps, in the long run, contribute to creating more work for the local craftsmen. When design and craftmanship meet, we hope to create more attractive products for which you can charge more reasonable prices so that the local craftsmen get a fairer share than what is often the case. We established contact with Furntech – South Africa's Centre of excellence for the furniture industry – where they accepted working with us in our exam project. At Furntech they focus on skills development in furniture manufacturing to improve quality in South African wood and furniture industry. They offer accredited training programmes as well as support/incubation for small and micro enterprises. Before going to South Africa, we studied their wealth of handicraft and also established contact to a ceramics studio called The Potters Workshop, whose work we found highly inspiring. We also found different metal workers who wanted to work with us in our project. When we finally came to Cape Town at the beginning of May, we experienced four very intensive weeks working together with the people that we had established contact to. The final outcome was a number of prototypes: a stool and a sideboard, both knock-down, and a number of hand-decorated ceramic lamps. All along we had the European market in mind, but to show an explicit sender, we wanted the products to carry a clear South African feeling. Therefore we combined materials and worked with colours in the details in ways similar to the those of the South African craftsmen.

La lampada Last Fruit, in ceramica decorata a mano e legno, è prodotta in Sudafrica.

After South Africa we felt inspired to continue working and cooperating with craftsmen in other countries. The idea of going to Vietnam started taking shape, and eventually we established contact with UMA, a Vietnamese furniture company. A necessary and important source of influence is both the country and the culture. That is why we want to travel without any final ideas and through visiting different craftsmen find inspiration for our work. Via UMA we got into contact with seagrass and plastic weavers in Ho Chi Minh City in southern Vietnam. They usually make small bowls with paperthread fixed around rolls of seagrass. After spending some time with the weavers and rethinking our first ideas, we realized that we could scale up the dimensions of the rolls. And having seen people in the streets selling hammocks made out of colourful thread we found the right combination. Since the Vietnamese weavers copied a lot of African patterns in their work, we didn´t want to use that. Instead, we worked together with Swedish illustrator Malin Koort, who helped us develop the patterns for the series. After some time we came up with the series called Superheroes. A lounge concept merging Vietnamese crafts and Scandinavian design. On the following pages we show some pictures from our visits to different artisans and from the first prototypes from our Vietnamese work. The pieces can now be ordered from Vietnam, just contact UMA. august@uma.vn
Tor & Mattias

Sgabello in legno. Sotto la base, alcune scanalature facilitano l'applicazione delle gambe in metallo.

Sideboard, cassettiera in legno con supporto in acciaio, che si può facilmente smontare, prodotta in Sudafrica.

Mattias e Tor fotografati con la collezione di prototipi prodotti in Sudafrica: Forbidden Fruit — oggetti di ceramica decorata a mano (appesi) —, la lampada Last Fruit, la cassettiera e lo sgabello.

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