Karl Blossfeldt wasn't a photographer. Not really. He was a sculptor and teacher who spent thirty years photographing plants, stems, seed heads, unfurling ferns, magnified up to thirty times their natural size. Enlarged and uncontextualised, the ordinary became sublime. His 1928 book Art Forms in Nature announced what he'd known all along: that a plant should be valued as a totally artistic and architectural structure. Nature was never the background. It was always the blueprint.
It's a principle we return to often in the studio and one that sits at the heart of our newest piece.
An iteration of our best-selling Cocher, the Cocher (Flower) is a solid timber column with six vertical ridges, their edges eased into soft curves, converging at the crown to reveal the abstract face of a flower when viewed from above. Hand turned in solid timber and finished with a leather or suede top, it maintains the quiet confidence of the original Cocher while bringing a more sculptural, botanical language to the collection. Softness and symmetry turned into form.
It feels fitting, too, that this piece is taking shape as we continue work on Long Lane, the site of our new workshop, studio and tree nurseries. It's still early days, a work in progress, framed for now by self-seeding poppies and a wildflower meadow that arrived long before we did. We're looking forward to building amongst it, to letting the site's own natural rhythms, much like Blossfeldt's magnified stems, quietly inform the work that comes out of it.
The Cocher (Flower) is available in a range of finishes and timbers.
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