Peter Merigold: Mr. Owl Ate My Metal Worm

(jiří macek) Words that read the same backward or forward have become the basis of an experimental collection entitled Palindrome, designed by British designer Peter Merigold. Each piece is made partly from a mold and partly from a casting. Thus, these individual furniture pieces are a mirror to themselves in which objects seems the same, yet very different.

The Palindrome collection has comparatively many levels that explore symmetry by different methods as a result of part being reflected into another one. The names of the individual objects – palindromes that read the same backward and forward – serve as a symbol. The Hannah wardrobe, the Kayak table, the Anna chair, the Civic bench, the Tattarrattat dresser, and a bookcase entitled Mr. Owl Ate My Metal Worm are extraordinary furniture pieces through which one part was created by casting another part.

Each half first received a wooden mold from which a composite plaster casting was made with a laminate admixture. Subsequently, the mold was turned inside out and became the other half of the furniture piece. Interesting things primarily happened as far as the details are concerned because any impurity in the casting was transformed into a decoration, any hole into a hanger, and a set of nodes turned into an artistic motif. The decorations even include a marigold that serves as a coat of arms.

Apart from playing with symmetry, the collection is also interesting for its inspiration from architecture. Textures of molds that we know from brutalist concrete buildings suddenly appear in the details of an interior design. We discover writings, emblems, and a perfectly soft roughness in the furniture details in the same way as we are fascinated by the structure of concrete logs from the formwork. Although a mirror records its impressions, the encounter with an original represents a brilliant play in which the truth is lost in clear outlines and the illusion of a mirror or exhibition coating becomes a concrete furniture piece.

Peter Marigold graduated from the Royal College of Art in London, where he has his own designer studio. We have already written about him in relation with the open studio of Okay, where he has exhibited several times. The Palindrome collection was created as a reaction to the Design Miami assignment for an exhibition entitled Designers of the Future Awards at Art Basel, where individually invited designers (apart from Peter Marigold, e.g. Raw Edges, and Tomáš Gabzdil Libertini) were supposed to apply plaster and a mirror as basic materials. The Palindrome collection was consequently exhibited at the Moss Gallery in New York.

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