Similar to how AMMA Studio added a new, "natural" flavor to high-end home decor with its avant-garde furniture line (which featured tables made of Himalayan rock salt and cement), Italian creative company Alcarol—founded by designers Andrea Forti and Eleonora Dal Farra—has created its own spin on organic furnishings with pieces made out of raw materials suspended in resin: a sticky, biotic substance harvested from trees and plants.
Alcarol's 'Undergrowth'
Each unique design is crafted from natural materials collected in the region surrounding the designers' homeland, from the Dolomite mountains in the north to the Venetian lagoon in the south. The elements are then submersed in resin to preserve their organic surfaces.
The design duo's FishEye stools and side tables, for instance, showcase sections of timber poles fished out of Venice's canals, which are hewed by the weather and Teredo Navalis—shipworms that carve out patterns of circular holes around the upper layers of the oak logs. Forti and Dal Farra then fill cracks and holes in the wood with clear resin, pouring the substance into a cylindrical mold outfitted with swivel casters on its base.
Alcarol's 'FishEye'
Alcarol's Dolomyth pieces feature chunks of mountain rock taken from an abandoned quarry, topped with mosses and lichens frozen in the translucent resin.
Alcarol's 'Dolomyth'
"The new pieces presented...aim to capture some unusual atmospheres of these unique places by freezing time at the end of the material's life cycle, thereby giving it a new life," says Alcarol.
The company's unusual products will be part of a collection of over 30 pieces by up-and-coming designers, showcased against pieces from the 1970s and 1980s in Elements of Craft, an exhibition at the Mint Gallery whose opening is set to coincide with the London Design Festival on September 13th.
Photos and details courtesy of Dezeen
