Adrian Swinstead
Designers to watch
Adrian Swinstead is an artist and designer creating evocative furniture using ancient preserved wood. His pieces combine the wood, which he sources from bogs around the UK, with contemporary materials such as glass and steel, bringing together craftsmanship, storytelling and contemporary design.
He trained at the Slade School of Art, and has spent much of his life living in woodlands, where, as he says, his work is "driven by a love of the material and the creative possibilities that it presents."
His work includes the 'Black lines' wall piece, created from a 5,500 year old oak root from from ploughed land in Wereham, Norfolk, and a glass dining table with ancient oak legs which were air dried for four years in preparation for the construction. In addition to these historic pieces, he also works with less ancient salvaged wood, such as his 'Jarrah Cabinet', created with jarrah cut from 100 year old reailway sleepers and storm felled beech.
Swinstead says "Whether it be in the shape of a sycamore tree trunk resolving in the shallow arch of a bench, the traceries of spalted beech in a cabinet panel, the graphic of light and dark found in the heartwood and sapwood of yew and displayed by a table top, or the shape of a board's edge expressed in the front of a cabinet, my desire is to make pieces with the capacity to feed the eye and imagination whilst fulfilling a practical function."
'Black lines' wall piece - 5,500 years old bog oak root from ploughed land in Wereham, Norfolk
Bog oak and glass bench, 1.85m long, bog oak tree from Conington Fen
Bog oak and glass circular dining table, 1.55m diameter, oak found in Wereham Fen, Norfolk and air dried for four years
Bog oak bowl
'Sycamore arch bench'
Cabinet made from bog oak and burr oak
'Jarrah cabinet' - jarrah cut from 100 year old reailway sleepers and storm felled beech
