Hugging and Poking Shelf by Schimmel and Schweikle - 2020

Description

The Hugging and Poking Shelf by Janne Schimmel, Dutch designer, and Moreno Schweikle, German designer is a hybrid structure combining raw tree trunks with 3D printed components that mimic natural wood forms. One half of the shelf is physically sculpted from foraged timber, while the other is its digitally scanned and printed mirror image - a ghostly twin made of wood filament. The two halves are fused together, challenging notions of originality, duplication, and the value of manual labor. This symbiotic relationship between analogue carving and digital reproduction forms a literal and conceptual embrace.

Shown in A Tree Full of Splinters at Everyday Gallery, the work captures the duo’s fascination with the evolution of material processing and how each transformation - trunk, plank, sawdust, filament - carries its own design language. By mimicking life through machines, the shelf embodies a generative tension where nature and simulation support one another both structurally and symbolically.

GW3995