Graduate shows 2015: tiny pieces of waste pine wood were meticulously hand-glued with each other by Royal School of Art graduate Simin Qiu to create these storage boxes and stationery items.
Qiu’s Finish Grain assortment contains rectangular, triangular and hexagonal containers for storing little objects. There’s also a clock, a ruler and a sliding box for maintaining pencils in.
Each is patterned with zigzag and herringbone motifs, created by cutting offcuts of pine into 5-millimetre-thick pieces and then glueing them together in alternate orientations.
The designer’s aim was to utilise the properties of the wood’s composition, equivalent to a task of the identical identify by London layout studio Raw Edges.
While Raw Edges used the small tubes that make up the wood to transfer coloured dye via sections of the materials, Qiu targeted on the wood’s normal patterns and translucency.
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“I created some easy varieties like boxes to give more chance to show the material’s beauty,” said the designer, explaining that the size of the objects was dictated by the timber offcuts.
Qiu also identified that by cutting the pine into ten-millimetre slices across the grain, the microscopic tubes allow a tiny amount of light to pass by way of.
Rather than utilise this characteristic for the equipment, he also developed a window shutter to show the translucency and its possible for architectural applications.
Pine is frequently employed in the furnishings and development industries due to the fact the trees increase swiftly, which means that the soft wood is relatively cheap.
Even so, sections of the material go to waste if they cannot be utilized for big items, so Qiu desired to highlight approaches in which these pieces can be utilised.
“I want people to know that pine has a high-value application, and offers a excellent illustration of how to use off-cut timber,” stated Qiu.
Qiu developed the End Grain assortment while studying on the RCA’s Design Items programme. The project is on display at the Show RCA 2015 graduate exhibition in London, which runs from 25 June to 5 July, along with a wooden spiral staircase that straps about any tree trunk and a collection of objects constructed employing a new materials made from plant fibres and naturally fermented cellulose.
