Design Miami/ Marcin Rusak
Sarah Myerscough Gallery brings Marcin Rusak's new White Perma Collection to Design Miami/ – furniture made from flowers.
Sarah Myerscough Gallery, CURIO, Design Miami/
3rd – 8th December, 2019
By Emma Crichton-Miller / 2nd December 2019
Marcin Rusak, ‘Perma 4’, 2019
COURTESY: Marcin Rusak and Sarah Myerscough Gallery
AT THIS YEAR’S Design Miami/, Sarah Myerscough Gallery is debuting a new collection of flower-inspired furniture by the multidisciplinary artist, Marcin Rusak. Born in Poland, Rusak grew up surrounded by the derelict greenhouses of his family’s abandoned flower business. A feeling for the romance and beauty of decay, allied with a curiosity about materials and experimental design processes led Rusak, while at the Royal College of Art in London, to invent a technique for embedding floral material first in textiles and then in resin, to extend its life.
Marcin Rusak working with his ‘White Perma’ material
COURTESY: Marcin Rusak and Sarah Myerscough Gallery
Since graduating in 2014, Rusak has won many awards for his spectacularly beautiful furniture even as he has continued to explore ways of working with both decaying and preserved vegetal matter.
Marcin Rusak, ‘Perma 5’, 2019
COURTESY: Marcin Rusak and Sarah Myerscough Gallery
For CURIO, Rusak has developed a range of unconventional furniture made from his new White Perma material. Petals, stems and buds are arranged in a delicate rhythmic pattern so that the dried flowers and grasses appear fossilised within the white resin. The sheets of resin are then sliced in cross-section, revealing their unique and intriguingly patterned surfaces, before being turned into sculptural pieces. The raw material is all sourced from florists’ waste; the discarded flowers are given a new life by becoming the very essence of the material.
Marcin Rusak, ‘Perma 6’, 2019
COURTESY: Marcin Rusak and Sarah Myerscough Gallery
“We cast the flowers in a block and then we slice through to reveal all these cross sections …”
Marcin Rusak
Marcin Rusak, ‘Perma 6’, 2019
COURTESY: Marcin Rusak and Sarah Myerscough Gallery
“… It surprises people to learn that these complex, intricate patterns are created by nature randomly”
Marcin Rusak
The Design Edit film crew flew to Rotterdam to interview Rusak in his workshop about his techniques and how he uses flowers to articulate his ideas about value, beauty and the ephemeral.
An interview with Marcin in his studio, in Rotterdam
COURTESY: The Design Edit
Sarah Myerscough Gallery – is a London art gallery representing contemporary painters, photographers and international craft and design.
Each piece comes as an edition of eight, with prices ranging from: $16,000 – $52,000 (excluding taxes). The price increases as the edition sells.
Emma Crichton-Miller is Editor-in-Chief of The Design Edit.
View all articles by Emma Crichton-Miller
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