This project explores how craft can be an act of resilience in the Anthropocene by treating waste as a noble material resource. It is the result of a year-long research into inlay techniques, and of my experiments to apply them to post-consumer plastic.
It is made from welded mild steel sheets with laser-cut cavities that leave space for melted HDPE bottle caps. The chair draws inspiration from European Baroque marquetry furniture, but the patterns depict living organisms including insects, worms, and fungi alongside human-made forms such as plastic bags and an excavator. They come from an observation of how plastic is becoming an integral part of the natural world, transforming ecosystems, becoming rocks and even fossils, but never fully disintegrating.
As a functional chair and a material research outcome, this piece questions how ideas of beauty, value, and permanence can be redefined when materials associated with disposability are integrated into inherited craft traditions.
