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Figure 3: Table Stories for Authentics
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TORD BOONTJE
Glass design
Tord Boontje (° 1968, the Netherlands) trained at the Design Academy in Eindhoven, the Netherlands (1991) and graduated in 1994 at the Royal College of Art London, London, UK. Following graduation, he set up his design company Studio Tord Boontje. In 2000, Boontje returned to the Royal College as tutor in Design Products, teaching for 4 years before moving to France where he established his studio. From 2009-2013, he was Head of the Design Products course at the London's Royal College of Art.
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Posted 10 January 2014
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Figure 1: tranSglass by Emma Woffenden and Tord Boontje
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Since 2005, Tord Boontje worked with a range of international companies such as Shiseido, Yamaha, Hewlett Packard, Bisazza, Target, Philips, Kvadrat, Alexander McQueen, Perrier-Jouët, Nanimarquina, Artecnica, Authentics, Meta, Swarovski, Moroso, and Habitat. The range of products includes lighting, graphics, textiles, ceramics and furniture. Examples are included in major collections such as the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK; the MoMA and Copper-Hewitt museum in New York, USA; the Design Museum and Tate Modern in London, UK.
The characteristics of his design philosophy are chaotic-ness, randomness and forgetfulness. This leads to objects and decorations that have a romantic and natural feeling but at the same time due to use on new production methods and ideas confer a high technicality. His pieces are frequently decorated with floral or natural elements while the preservation of nature and recycling of materials is a priority in his production.
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Figure 2. Wednesday Glass designed for Dartington Crystal
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tranSglass
The idea behind the tranSglass label is to use what there is already available and includes a number of vases recycled form bottles using a relatively simple technique. The empty bottle is turned into something else: a candelabra, a vase, a jug, or a carafe. The first pieces were designed in 1997 and originally produced by Tord Boontje and Emma Woffenden in their London studio. Since 2005 tranSglass is produced in Guatemala City in a newly created workshop where young people learn the skills of glass making and who have become experts in cutting and polishing (Figure 1).
Wednesday Glass
In 2001, Boontje designed “Wednesday glass” for Dartington Crystal. The inspiration of the series was based on the inclusion of air bubbles in glass. Glass blowers first make a bubble of hot glass, which is then scored with a spiked tool thereby trapping air which is covered with an overlay of a second glass layer. The distortion of glass after the first step led to the creation of new patterns by wooden boards with nails sticking out and making unique glass objects (Figure 2).
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Table Stories
The collection “Table Storie”, which Boontje designed for Authentics and was produced in 2005, is a rich graphic narrative on everyday ceramic plates, bowls and glasses. They are executed in functional basic shapes that are decorated with an unique graphic pattern. The drawings are filled with flowers, deer, squirrel, birds, bear, butterflies, horses, bunnies and a peacock. The animals and flowers seem to merge and to grow out of each other. Some of the elements are hidden inside the patterns. These objects can be used daily, but are also very decorative and entertaining (Figure 3).
Droplet Carafe
In 2011, he designed the Droplet Carafe for use with water and wine for Triflow. The carafe is shaped like a droplet of water and in the interior of the bottle a slight shadow of a veil-like structure is recognizable making it an intriguing object (Figure 4).
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Figure 4: Droplet Carafe designed for Triflow
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Glass lamps
Boontje also designed several lamps in glass for different companies. For Swarovski, he designed a series of “Blossom chandeliers” in which crystal flowers are mounted together with LED lamps on a branch, referring to the spring feeling when trees are budding there leafs and flowers (Figure 9).
Tangle Globe (2011) was designed for Artecnica and consist on a basic form on which different etched metal patterns are fixed. The patterns again refer to nature and give the object a Victorian feeling (Figure 10).
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