Clamoring for Cork
When we launched our second cork collection in 2022, Hannah Martin of Architectural Digest featured us in her article "Designers are Clamoring for Cork." While a few quotes made it into the piece, we thought it would be fun to share the full Q&A interview here for your summer reading pleasure:
Hannah: What originally attracted you to cork and inspired you to start working with it?
Chelsea: We launched our first cork collection in 2021 after three years of research and development. It was fully inspired by the unique properties of cork itself.
Cork is made from the outer bark of the cork oak tree. These trees grow in Mediterranean climates and can live for up to 200 years. The bark is hand-harvested every nine years without harming the tree in any way. This makes it a rapidly renewable material and a powerful carbon sink. Due to the regeneration process, the more bark harvested from the tree, the more carbon is absorbed.
The drought-resistant cork forests where our cork is harvested in Portugal are home to over 200 animal species and 135 plant species. These forests require no chemical agricultural inputs.
When developing our cork work, we wanted to honor this extraordinary material first and foremost. Our sculptural tables and benches take advantage of the block and cylinder forms that are standard in the cork production process. We use these standards as the basic formal components of our final designs.
Our brief to ourselves is to celebrate cork by finding the most efficient ways to shape our forms so that we are left with minimal waste. We have always been interested in the intersection of technology and craft. Our cork pieces are a further exploration of that intersection.
Hannah: Can you describe the appeal of the material, both aesthetically and environmentally?
Chelsea: Being a rapidly renewable material and a powerful carbon sink is what drew us to cork to begin with. That said, it is our hope to build furniture and objects to be passed down for generations. In order to do so, we know we need to speak to more than just material features but to the physical connection, you experience when living with these objects.
At first look, the shapes are friendly and inviting, but it is their surfaces that really draw you in. Though durable and resilient, the hand of the finished surfaces feel more like velvet than wood. They immediately become grounding elements in the home.
In all of our work, our hope is that we are building furniture and objects that will be passed down for generations. At the same time, cork is fully biodegradable at the end of its useful life.
Hannah: Describe some of the functional benefits of corks in terms of what it can offer in an interior space?
Chelsea: The inherent properties of cork include being hypoallergenic, moisture and fire resistant, sound and heat insulating as well as soft and resilient to touch. This allows cork to be used both indoors and outdoors. The surface is so durable that it does not need to be sealed with any potentially harmful chemicals. All of our work is solid cork, so if there is ever an issue with the surface, it can be easily refreshed with a light sanding.
Hannah: Are there any things you'd like to realize in cork that you haven't yet?
We have sketches for some cork lighting in the works. We are also considering some smaller tabletop objects that could potentially re-use some of our furniture production off-cuts.
Hannah: Why do you think cork is having a moment?
Chelsea: As a raw material, cork feels super futuristic to us. The idea that you harvest just what you need - not too much - and in doing so you do not disturb the ecosystem that surrounds it is the way that we all need to be thinking about living in right relationship with the natural world.