Max Lamb

Traceability may be an important question when buying food, or ordering from a restaurant but with furniture we are much less concerned by this. Designer Max Lamb might not have intentionally set out to redefine this in furniture, but his short time-lapse films show the materials used and how each piece was made.

Courtesy americancraftmag.org

As he told Dezeen in 2009 “My furniture is very personal; people only buy it if they respond emotionally, so they’re unlikely to throw it away. Lifespan and the relationship between an item and its user are more important than so-called ecological materials. It’s the culture of disposal that I think we need to address. The materials and processes I use are very durable – you can be very rough with them. And I don’t follow fashion.”

This rings nicely in my ears as I think about the objects I own and what matters to me when I buy pieces… ‘will it last?’, ‘how was it made?’ and ‘will it grow on me or against me?’. Max works to help answer these questions.