Clerkenwell Design Week 2014: five teams from London design collective Okay Studio have created furniture and products from different hardwood varieties for this year's Clerkenwell Design Week in London (+ slideshow).
The Five collection has been designed by members of Okay Studio to mark the fifth edition of Clerkenwell Design Week and will be on display for the duration of the event, in an exhibition supported by the American Hardwood Export Council.
Types of wood chosen for the designers were picked to demonstrate the variety of available timbers.
"Given current furniture fashion you may be forgiven for thinking our forests are all about white oak and walnut," said David Venables, European director of the American Hardwood Export Council. "This is not the case; white oak is not the most abundant oak species and walnut is less than one of the standing hardwood trees in the forests."
"The five species we selected for this project (ash, maple, red oak, tulipwood and cherry), account for over 50 per cent of the resource," he said.
Designer Mathias Hahn has designed a family of kitchen utensils in simple shapes from American hard maple.
His Runcible collection includes two plates, a spoon and spatula, a chopping board, and a pestle and mortar.
Each item is shaped so it can serve multiple purposes rather than just for a specific task.
A screen of curved tulipwood pieces was created by designers Peter Marigold and Andrew Haythornthwaite.
The elements of their Tulou screen, stained green and yellow, are balanced on tensile wires and held in place by red oak counter balances.
These pieces bob up and down in a breeze, creating a wall of quavering triangles.
Cones of American ash, cherry, hard maple, red oak and tulipwood are held upside down in glass vessels to form the Apex Tables by studio Hunting & Narud.
The apex of each cone is the only part that touches the cylindrical transparent and coloured glass bowls, which come in five different sizes.
The five cones are laminated vertically in the different woods and all have solid tops.
Designer Ed Swan's Shift Series comprises five stackable pedestals of various heights, built with American red oak frames.
The stools have five sides, each covered in slats cut from different wood types and all topped with burnt tulipwood.
The slats are all arranged at different angles between horizontal and vertical. They can used together as a set of seats and tables.
American tulipwood battens have been used by Lilliana Ovalle to create two lightweight benches.
The battens are machined at different thicknesses along their lengths to create patterns across the slatted surfaces.
The shorter version is a simple cuboid, while the longer design includes an off-centre backrest.
The exhibition will be show at The SCIN Gallery in London from 20 to 22 May. Photographs are by Petr Krejci.