Milan 2014: a bracelet made from pencil leads and a stool designed to collect dust are among pieces that Danish designers will exhibit at this year's Mindcraft exhibition in Milan (+ slideshow).
Curated by Danish designer Nina Tolstrup, this year's Mindcraft exhibition includes work by 12 Danish designers who were all asked to create pieces under the theme Materialising Beliefs.
Tolstrup aims to highlight the craft element of Danish design and she selected designers from a range of disciplines to showcase their handcraft skills.
Projects displayed will include a bracelet by Katrine Borup, made from mechanical pencil leads woven together into a ribbon and rolled up. Borup poked the leads up to create an embossed message around the top of the coil. Titled iLoveLetters, it was created to highlight the fact that few people write letters to each other now.
The wooden chair by benandsebastian won't be complete until dust has settled onto the intricate walnut latticework that forms the back. The chair is so fragile that attempting to clean it with a feather duster would cause it to collapse.
Pipaluk Lake formed her Suspension I piece by melting panes of glass over twisted wires in a giant kiln. She then hung the piece from a metal frame so the glass appears to be dripping from the wires.
A ten-metre-long textile print was made by Anne Fabricius Møller with objects she found on the street. The print is arranged in an almost symmetrical pattern, with colours matching the hues of the original objects where possible.
Usually known for working in wood, Jakob Jørgensen has tried his hand as a blacksmith and forged a set of steel woodworking tools.
Kristine Tillge Lund has extruded 600 tall white porcelain rods, which she will lean up against two walls in the exhibition and observe how people act in the space.
Martin Løbner Espersen's glazed ceramic vases with growths and tumours sprouting from their Grecian form will be displayed alongside his tub-like containers patterned with layers of colour.
The Elements clothes rail by Line Depping is constructed from modules of steam-bent wood. Starting with three rails that fix together at each side, extra pieces can be added to create more storage space.
Nikoline Liv Andersens's Rococo-inspired wigs each have one of the Three Wise Monkeys - see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil - integrated into the top.
Also on show will be lamps that look like skirts by Iskos-Berlin, ceramic flower arrangements by Marianne Nielsen, and porcelain and wood sculptures by Marie Torbensdatter Hermann.
The exhibition will take place in the Ventura Lambrate design district at Via Venture 6 from 8 to 13 April, during Milan's design week.
Here's more information from the designers:
Mindcraft14: Danish Craft and Design at Milan Design Week 2014
A fragile bracelet woven of mechanical pencil lead, a delicate dust-collecting stool and a lamp shade that looks like a skirt that is picked up by the wind. 12 Danish craftspeople focus on the experimental and the tangible in Mindcraft14 at Fuori Salone from 8 through 13 April in Milan.
When 12 Danish craftspeople and designers present their works at the major design event Fuori Salone in Milan, the exhibits include both experiments and near-finished prototypes.
This year's Danish Mindcraft exhibition focuses on the artistic process that unfolds in the workshop when craftspeople produce their unique works.
"Danish craft draws on a strong tradition, where the workshop is the setting for basic research and experimentation – and for materialising extraordinary ideas," says Nina Tolstrup, the curator of this year's Mindcraft.
The Danish exhibition showcases the high level of design quality, the firm knowledge of materials and the innovative approaches that have helped make Danish design world-renowned. Another goal is to help the individual participant break through on the international scene.
According to Nina Tolstrup, both the maker's role and the experimental workshop processes have taken on growing relevance in recent years:
"Global industrial manufacturing is becoming increasingly uniform, simplified and thus also more vulnerable to plagiarism. Craft is a powerful response – as well as an important source of inspiration for renewal and development in industrial manufacturing," she says.
Under the heading Materialising Beliefs, which addresses the link between artistic experimentation and the tangible contribution to the world, the exhibition includes Katrine Borup's iLoveLetters: a ribbon woven of mechanical pencil lead, which reflects how the computer has virtually made hand-writing extinct. Iskos-Berlin have created a series of lamp shades that float down from the ceiling like skirts lifted by the wind.
At a distance, benandsebastian's work Completely Dusty looks like a simple stool; close up, however, one discovers the overwhelmingly complex construction made of tiny elements carved in wood. The work is a comment on modern furniture design with its smooth, clean surfaces – Completely Dusty welcomes and virtually defends the dust that we work so hard to eliminate, in this fragile form that would most likely collapse if it were subjected to a feather duster.
Mindcraft14 is on display from 8 through 13 April at the design week in Milan's Ventura Lambrate at 6 Via Ventura.
The craftspeople selected to participate in Mindcraft14 are:
» Nikoline Liv Andersen
» benandsebastian
» Iskos-Berlin
» Katrine Borup
» Line Depping
» Morten Løbner Espersen
» Marie Torbensdatter Hermann
» Jakob Jørgensen
» Pipaluk Lake
» Kristine Tillge Lund
» Anne Fabricius Møller
» Marianne Nielsen
Facts about Mindcraft14
Mindcraft is an internationally recognized and award-winning annual exhibition with varying participants, put together by external curators, that presents the finest examples of Danish craft and design at the world’s leading design scene during the Milan design week. From 2014, the MINDCRAFT exhibition is supported by the Danish Arts Foundation with the Danish Agency for Culture serving as the secretariat.
