For Melbourne Design Week, Thomas Coward collaborated with renowned designer Fiona Lynch to construct an installation.

Friday, 15 March 2019.

Discovered in a quarry in Greece 20 years ago, Artedomus’ Elba can trace its origins back 250 million years. The dolomite-based stone formed in a coral reef, where it was heated and compressed at the bottom of the ocean through the movement of tectonic plates. Now, the stone’s remarkable history is celebrated through the Artedomus ℅ New Volumes™ Collection in an installation by Fiona Lynch and Thomas Coward, which explores Elba’s journey “from the ground to the house”.

For Melbourne Design Week, Thomas Coward collaborated with renowned designer Fiona Lynch to construct an installation of the New Volumes™ Collection. The installation juxtaposes the material’s exceptional strength and ancient history with its tactility and softness, which makes it ideal used in both sculpture and architecture.

Exhibited in the TDF Gallery, rough-hewn Elba plinths quarried in Greece are contrasted with the organic curved forms of the New Volumes™ Collection, representing the journey of the material over time, “from the ground to the house”. Presented in both its raw and refined states, visitors to the exhibition can engage with the material beyond the form in which it is usually encountered. The result creates the impression that these carefully designed, pure forms have somehow emerged from the block, and encourages consideration of our relationship with natural materials while highlighting Elba’s unique qualities and potential.

The installation is a landscape for its visitors to explore, discovering the power and presence of this material hundreds of millions of years in the making.

Photography: Sean Fennessy
Words: Rose Onans
This article originally featured on The Local Project.