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When you think of original designs, you know that you’re talking about something unique and special. An innovative design that can change our perception and visual culture: that is exactly what the German designer Elisa Strozyk does with Wooden Textiles, a product line that mixes wood with fabric.
The designer shows us that innovation remains a fundamental part of design. She imbues wood with living properties and turns it to a flexible fabric with unpredictable movements, changing its color and texture. It’s an astonishing use of this traditional material to create new forms and experiences.
Wooden textiles seeks to convey a new tactile experience. We’re used to experiencing wood as a hard material. We know the feeling of walking on a hardwood floor, touching a table or just feeling the bark of a tree. But we don’t usually experience a wooden surface that can be manipulated or molded by our hands.
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Elisa Strozyk explores ways to provide textile-like properties to wood, making it soft and flexible. The result is a material that is half wood – half fabric, a mix between stiffness and flexibility, challenging what is expected of this type of material. It smells and looks familiar, but it feels strange since it is able to move and come to life in unexpected ways. Strozyk explains:
The world around us is increasingly intangible. We’re used to writing emails now instead of letters, online shopping, downloading music and pressing virtual buttons on touch screens. We live in a society of images, a visual culture full of color; advertisements, television and Internet. It doesn’t allow us to feel. Giving surfaces we want to feel the importance they deserve we can reconnect with the material world and increase the emotional value of an object.
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The process to transform wood into a flexible surface involves breaking it up into triangular pieces and manually attaching them to a textile base. Depending on their size and shape, each piece displays different behaviors in terms of flexibility and malleability.
This geometric pattern can be used to create numerous objects, such as rugs, carpets, coverings, upholstery, clothing and even furniture.
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Murals
Dyed – Wooden – Textiles
For this collection wood is stained with a special technique, emphasizing the natural growth patterns in the wood.
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Table Runners
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A collection that alludes to plaid fabrics like tablecloths and table runners, using fading color patterns. It is an exclusive collection for the Gestalten Pavilion store in Berlin.
Colored – Tablerunners
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Fading plaids – Tablerunners
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Lamp
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Miss – Marple
This ceiling lamp shows the use of wood in an unconventional way. The grid of triangles makes a flexible display that can be manually transformed into three-dimensional shapes. Although it generates light in the darkness, the outer surface becomes more evident with daylight, becoming a sculptural object.
Wooden Rugs
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The potential of this carpet lies in its flexibility. It can be rolled up and easily transported. The ability to move it implements a potential for change. It can be placed on the floor, sculpted in a dramatic way, or placed it on the wall.
Limited Red
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Grey Black Birch
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Mostly Red
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Ashdown
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Mortimer
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Sherwood
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Wentwood
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Furniture
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Septagon – Bar – Cabinet
With its sculptural three-dimensional surface and the exceptional heptagonal shape, this mounted “bar cabinet” resembles a “wooden crystal.” The inside of the case is covered with a layer of light sensitive padouk, whose bright red fades with each opening of the cabinet door.
The flexibility of Wooden Textiles has attracted interest from other designers in the textile world, which has allowed for various collaborations, where dresses and other garments made of wood were created, and which can be seen at the end of this video:
Sig Nordal 