fallenTree
Morning Mist Collection
YMER&MALTA/ Benjamin Graindorge
2011
The fruit of a collaboration between Valérie Maltaverne, founder of the YMER&MALTA studio, and designer Benjamin Graindorge, the Fallen Tree bench explores the relationship between humans and nature. The concept of time is evoked in the fall of the tree. How many years until the tree reaches even the roots of the sky? How many hours to reduce it to planks? How many days before it isreborninanewform?Howlongawaitbeforesomeonecomes to sit upon it and meditate, ad infinitum, on the cycle of life?
Reacting to a society embroiled in speed mania, Valérie Maltaverne and Benjamin Graindorge stand up against the mad race for consumption and profit. They create at the speed of life, at the speed of humans and their environment. In the tradition of William Morris’s Arts and Crafts movement, they seek to com- bine technological innovation with expertise, nobility of materials with the poetry of technique. The oak for Fallen Tree was chosen in the forest, with care, and in good conscience, then taken to a carpenter, who shaped it artfully, in accordance with the best principles of his craft.
Resting horizontally on a slab of borosilicate glass, with transparent properties and three times stronger than traditional glass, from one end to the other the bench appears suspended between two lives. A natural life, symbolised by the oak branches free to dispose themselves in space, and the life of knowledge represented by the precise and delicate crafting of the seat. Assem- blage and contemplation are Benjamin Graindorge’s watchwords.
In Fallen Tree those goals have been achieved. YMER&MALTA and Graindorge have assembled before and after, the natural and the artificial. Here, in this highly engaged work,
the two designers demonstrate and explore the omnipotence of humans over their environment. They invite the user to con- template and celebrate the luxury of a nature still alive, a nature now so vulnerable in the face of passing time.
Cloé Pitiot, Curator, Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris.
Text written for the book of the 10,000 Years of Luxury Exhibition, at the Louvre Abu-Dhabi and the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris.
The fallenTree was exhibited at the Louvre Abu-Dhabi and the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris as part of the 10,000 Years of Luxury exhibition. It has also been exhibited at the Musée d’Art et d’Histoire Louis Senlecq in l’Isle-Adam, the Musée Quadrilatère in Beauvais, the Musée des Arts Décoratifs de la Faïence et de la Mode in Marseille, the Musée d’Art Contemporain in Saint-Étienne, the Centre Pompidou Metz, West Bund in Shanghai and the Homo Faber Foundation in Venice.
Carved oak and borosilicate glass base
Finished in solid natural oak
L.110 x W.273 x H.120 cm
Limited edition of 12
Acquired by the Centre Georges Pompidou, the Musée de la Chasse et la Nature and the Fondation Albertine, cultural services of the French Embassy in New York on 5th Avenue.
Other pieces of the same type :
Seating
