Max Lamb, who grew up in Cornwall’s St Austell and is now based in London, felled a 187-year-old tree on his Grandfather’s Yorkshire farm and sliced it into 130 useable objects to save it from being used as firewood. The slices were displayed in order of diameter at Somerset House during the London Design Festival in September in collaboration with Gallery FUMI.
“I decided I wanted my Grandfather’s tree to survive beyond its rooted life, to offer the tree an afterlife and celebrate the inherent potential of the material within,” explained Max. “I wanted to process each piece of the tree as little as possible, other than to make the top and base level in order to give function to the material.”
“I cut the sections into logs of average ‘furniture’ height suitable for use as stools, tables and chairs. Each log becomes a surface for what my Grandfather would call ‘general purpose’ use. The ash tree continues to exist as an ash tree, but with a new life, a new function and the start of a new history.”
Previous projects have displayed the same respect for nature. In 2006, Max made the Pewter stool by pouring molten-pewter into moulds he dug into the sand on Cornwall’s Caerhays beach. “Sand casting is one of the earliest forms of casting due to its simplicity and low-tech materials required,” he said.
Molten metal is poured into a cavity mould made in either natural or synthetic sand, usually bonded with oil or chemical binders. The Pewter stool was made using a simplified version of this process using a twin-hob gas cooker and two stainless steel saucepans the designer borrowed from his Mum.
“I chose to use the natural landscape of Caerhays beach on the South coast of Cornwall to make the stool,” said Max. “Most of my childhood was spent on this and other Cornish beaches building castles, boats and tunnels in the sand, and I decided it would be nice to return to my favourite beach to produce a stool using a process Cornwall was once famous for.” During the mining boom, Cornwall had two of the world’s three largest mine engine foundries (Harvey’s 1779-1903 and Copperhouse 1820-1869) that both used sand casting in their production processes.
Max’s latest project is the Planks collection for British furniture manufacturer Benchmark, which is inspired by traditional English box stools and storage chests, and includes a table with a tabletop made from three side-by-side wooden planks resting on L-shaped legs with a ‘secret’ storage box concealed inside.
My Grandfather’s Tree images courtesy of Gallery FUMI.
An artistic way of respecting wood