London-based designer Bethan Laura Wood has joined Dezeen Awards 2024 as a judge. Here, she selects five projects that best reflect her work.
Wood defines herself as a multidisciplinary designer with "an aesthetic made from layering forms, colours, materials and concepts".
The British designer's distinctive pieces are often site-specific and aim to increase consciousness around mass production and consumption.
"I have an interest in interventions on mass production systems to make one-off work that explores the growing awareness around issues connected with overconsumption," Wood told Dezeen.
"My work is often in response to a location, reflecting the visual and material culture particular to that area," she continued.
"Fascinated by the connections we make with everyday objects that surround us, and as a collector myself, I like to explore what drives people to hold onto one particular object while discarding another."
The designer is currently developing works for furniture fair Salone del Mobile with Italian brand CC-Tapis and Nilufar Gallery, as well as working on several private commissions and industrial projects that will launch in 2025.
She also recently designed a series of frilly glass hooks for a collaborative exhibition at California gallery Blunk Space.
Wood among Dezeen Awards 2024 judges
Dezeen Awards 2024 launched last month in partnership with Bentley. This week we announced our fifth set of Dezeen Awards judges, including architect Eric Owen Moss, designer Jay Osgerby, artist Pilar Zeta, design director Noella Nibakuze and interior designer Betsy Smith.
There is less than one week left until the early entry deadline! Submit your entry by next Wednesday 27 March to save 20 per cent on entry fees.
Read on to find Wood's views on the five projects that best represent the work of her studio:
Hypernature for Perrier-Jouët, 2018
"The aesthetic took inspiration from art nouveau, with hand-dyed PVC wisteria blossom referencing both the stained-glass windows of the house and the exquisite colour, ombré, in the work of French artist Émile Gallé.
"The curves and bends of the branch forms honour the whiplash line [ornamental S-curve] in art nouveau style while creating a structure where fixing and details are highlighted, becoming part of the final aesthetic."
Super Fake, 2011-19
"From laminate marquetry to hand-knotted carpets, the world of Super Fake explores our obsession with surface and interpretations of interpretations.
"In the Super Fake collections, I used the rock as a reference to explore the post-Instagram and Snapchat world, where the fleeting two-dimensional image collides with a physical and tactile reality; the hyper- and super-fake spill into our daily lives."
Disco Gourds, 2022
"Invited to make a collection for 1882, I wanted to draw on the ceramic history of Trompe-l’œil decoration of food vessels.
"Theatrical dining merged into a wondrous obsession with creating hyper-realistic ceramic replicas of fruits, vegetables, and even whole animals.
"The collection of Disco Gourds vessels stylised and flattened these perforations to make a second layer of pattern and decoration. This was achieved using a technique called slip lining, where each pattern line is drawn and colour filled giving a stain glass line quality."
Totem, 2023
"Totem is made from various glass volumes that are layered and locked together to create an airy light that explores the translucency and thinness intrinsic to this type of glass.
"This collection of lights mixes the aesthetics typical of Pyrex volumes associated with the medical and chemistry industries, with the creativity of hand-blown techniques.
"The result is a system where, depending on how the different components are stacked, an aesthetic of science fiction is evoked, creating robots and rockets to strange aquatic animals and translucent clowns."
Kaleidoscope-o-Rama for Mecca x NGV Triennial, 2023
"The installation includes a five-tiered, hexagon-shaped bookcase, developed in collaboration with Italian manufacturer Alpi, and a hand-tufted hexagonal wool carpet, made by long-time collaborator CC-Tapis.
"In this installation, the 18th and 19th-century gallery becomes a contemporary bluestocking parlour for shared conversation and contemplation.
"Drawing on the colours of the Regency period, we created books of exotic wood grain like the early paper collages or patchworks associated with a 'fitting' past time for women, into the larger scale furnishing of the room."
Dezeen Awards 2024 in partnership with Bentley
Dezeen Awards is the ultimate accolade for architects and designers across the globe. The seventh edition of the annual awards programme is in partnership with Bentley as part of a wider collaboration to inspire, support and champion design excellence and showcase innovation that creates a better and more sustainable world. This ambition complements Bentley's architecture and design business initiatives, including the Bentley Home range of furnishings and real estate projects around the world.