Reykjavík Grapevine - 21.09.2012, Blaðsíða 34

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Harpa, who is the director of the Icelandic Museum
of Design and Applied Art, points to the twined rope on
“Húsgagn Nr. 2,” a storage piece by Brynjar Sigurðarson
at the front of the museum’s gallery space. The rope wrap-
ping its wooden coat hooks was made by hand with net-
needles and nylon string, using a process Brynjar learned
from a 70-year-old Icelandic shark hunter.
“Iceland is a country without much industry,” Harpa
says, but one that has a “can-do attitude.” Just a decade
ago, a question about ‘Icelandic product design’ would
have only returned blank stares. Since then, international
breakthroughs like Sigga Heimis and Katrín Ólína have
paved the way for the growing number of young Icelan-
dic designers, many of them graduates from the Iceland
Academy of Arts product design department, which
opened in 2001.
The museum’s latest exhibit, “Saga til næsta bæjar,” is
an exploration of the unique materials, processes, and ap-
proach Icelanders take in a field that, in most other places,
is wedded to a long tradition of product manufacturing.
WE CAN DO MORE WITH THAT
These days, the bones, hides, horns and other by-products
of animal processing in Iceland are considered offal next
to fish and meat. But it wasn’t always that way. Before the
advent of plastics and imports, animal products were used
in design on almost every level of daily life: eating, cook-
ing, farming, playing—even building. What’s unique
about Iceland is that this history is not distinct from liv-
ing memory. When designers and artists ref lect on their
roots, they start driving.
Enter Brynjar Sigurðarson. The story of “Húsgagn Nr.
2” lies in the village of Vopnafjörður in north-eastern Ice-
land. After driving there from Reykjavík in 2008, Bryn-
jar found himself awed by the functional forms of shark
houses, fishing factories, and netting needles. For a de-
signer, the question posed is one of synthesis: ‘What more
can we do with this?’ Sketches and prototypes eventually
led to wood planks fanned out as coat hooks, reminiscent
of hooks used for rubber gloves in fish factories. The
planks are tied with ropes handmade, and functionality is
stacked with a mounted white storage bin. Taking in the
coarse combination of materials used to assemble “Hús-
gagn Nr. 2,” you can almost smell the fish oil.
As Harpa explains, Brynjar is not alone. Icelandic
product designers of the past decade have tapped into
regular Icelandic life processes, tinkering with raw mate-
rials as diverse as fish bones, moss and chocolate to make
jewellery, slick fish bone model-making kits, and volcano-
shaped candies that don’t feel manufactured so much as
created. Product designers are repurposing and refresh-
ing handicrafts, and adding value. The sheer quantity of
product innovations in 10 years’ time ref lects what Harpa
calls Icelanders’ unique willingness to “just dive in.”
FROM THE EARTH, FOR THE EARTH
The gradual emergence of Icelandic design has been
shaped by an international awakening to “responsible de-
sign” that began roughly a decade ago. Recycling materi-
als, setting conventional materials aside and finding ways
to use other ones—these are all features of the concept.
At the same time, the ethics of responsible design
have served as a reminder that art can be close to nature
and close to the Earth. The museum’s exhibit includes
Guðrún Lilja Gunnlaugsdóttir’s “Inner Beauty”—a furni-
ture piece made from layers of plywood f lowers randomly
assorted to evoke the depth of humans’ connection to na-
ture. Cased with round-edged wood, the piece works vari-
ously as a low table, bench or stool.
Guðrún has also worked on “Birch,” a set of small birch
branches dipped in silver. Pieces like these seek to enter
spaces uncommonly reserved for art—the wall beneath a
staircase, the centre of a table. Reminders of an earlier
time before Iceland’s settlement, when birches were the
only trees on the island; manifestations of the question:
where else can product design get a foot in the door here?
THIRTEEN WAYS OF LOOKING AT A WOOL BLANKET
Rough, warm Icelandic wool fuelled the trade for Russian
oil and enjoyed high prices internationally through the
1980s. After cheaper synthetic f leece crashed the market,
the soul-searching began: How can raw wool and simple
blankets be turned into true artisanal products? Brands
like Vík Prjónsdóttir emerged later to answer the question
with ingenuity, stretching the boundaries of Icelandic
wool and mapping them with pieces like “The Landscape
Blanket,” a woolly take on volcanic topography in three
dimensions.
Wool is the weave for Vík Prjónsdóttir’s designers, but
the mythic ideas from which they source their work are
lodged in the rich narrative lore of the North. Another
piece included in the exhibit is “Hidden World,” a med-
ley of blanket, cape, and “healing hands” that neatly folds
magic into the world of product design.
Wool is being used now not just for haute production
but for experimental repurposing. “Knitted couch” dem-
onstrates the possibilities in stripping down older imita-
tion furniture models and weaving a new story through
34 The Reykjavík GrapevineIssue 15 — 2012ART The exhibition is open daily at the Icelandic Museum of Design and
Applied Arts, until October 14.
Words
Nic Cavell
Photos
Anna María Sigurjónsdóttir
Toward An Icelandic Product Design
“If I had to say,” Harpa Þórsdóttir says, “the identity of Icelandic product design is in the
materials: fish bone, fish skin, knitted wool. And it’s in the handicrafts we do.”