#HTE

If you’ve been hankering for a hand-thumbed, terracotta seat with built in pot plant, look no further – Chris Wolston is your man. He’s a Brooklyn-based designer who marries cultural/traditional techniques with an inspired contemporary aesthetic.

Wolston’s work comes from the Columbian hand made methods of the local artisans. He was exposed to the traditional ceramic arts during his Fulbright fellowship whilst studying there. If you don’t find him tinkering away in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, you’ll find him sequestered in a studio in Medellín, the capital of Colombia’s mountainous Antioquia province.

It was in Colombia where he studied sand-casting and brick making and developed a synergy with the local materials like terracotta. His seats and tables are made from the ancient material, synonymous with South Americas pre-Colombian past. You might have noticed the hand markings on these pieces. They’re a reference to the fingerprints the brick makers in Medellín leave behind when smoothing the wet clay in the wooden moulds. This handmade approach to his work is part of his process of disengaging from – “The aesthetic of mechanisation.”

Wolston uses the same approach with his handmade Fetish Lights collection. It’s a textural experience – handmade using neon tubing and sand-cast glass. It’s a haphazard amalgamation of clear and colourful glass and shards that were once destined for the tip.

These extravagantly decorative pieces seem to grow organically from the brightly lit, neon tubing supporting them. They are brash and bold and bright. Which frankly is most unlike Wolston’s far more grounded, earthy, Aztec-vibe furniture. But that’s the genius of his work. Materials speak to him in different ways and require from him, a different language of communication.

[Images courtesy of Chris Wolston & Patrick Parrish Gallery.]

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