"People have a warm feeling towards materials like wood,” says designer James Shaw. Plastic, on the other hand? Not so much. James Shaw
"People have a warm feeling towards materials like wood,” says designer James Shaw. Plastic, on the other hand? Not so much.
Shaw’s latest line of furniture puts some of the world's excess plastic to use in a way he hopes will reignite consumers’ appreciation for the ubiquitous material. James Shaw
Shaw’s latest line of furniture puts some of the world's excess plastic to use in a way he hopes will reignite consumers’ appreciation for the ubiquitous material.
The Plastic Baroque includes coffee and side tables, and a wall-mounted lamp, all made from extruded plastic and glass. James Shaw
The Plastic Baroque includes coffee and side tables, and a wall-mounted lamp, all made from extruded plastic and glass.
The plastic elements look like ropes made out of Play-doh, but the pieces are influenced by baroque furniture from the 18th century, with a color scheme based on a palace that belonged to Catherine the Great. James Shaw
The plastic elements look like ropes made out of Play-doh, but the pieces are influenced by baroque furniture from the 18th century, with a color scheme based on a palace that belonged to Catherine the Great.
For the project, Shaw built his own extrusion gun that can emit molten plastic at about a one-inch diameter. It works a little like a hot glue gun, but bigger, and it’s loaded with old plastic collected from east London recycling centers. James Shaw
For the project, Shaw built his own extrusion gun that can emit molten plastic at about a one-inch diameter. It works a little like a hot glue gun, but bigger, and it’s loaded with old plastic collected from east London recycling centers.
Another of Shaw's odd experimental works is on display at MoMA in New York City. James Shaw
Another of Shaw's odd experimental works is on display at MoMA in New York City.
Furniture designer James Shaw thinks consumers have an attitude problem about plastic.
“If you think about wood, you can think about some beautiful hardwood desk that your grandfather owned or something, and you can connect with that object. People have a warm feeling towards materials like wood,” he says. Plastic, on the other hand? Not so much. “People don’t have that warm feeling towards plastic, people generally have a quite negative feeling towards it as a material. My belief is that it’s simply how we’re approaching it.”
From a sensory perspective, that’s a natural reaction. Wood is organic, warm, and feels like it’s part of the earth. Plastic is synthetic, cold, and conjures up associations of industrialization and pollution. Problem is, we have a lot of it. Nearly 300 million tons of it were produced globally in 2013, and that’s just the new plastic. That figure doesn’t account for the millions of tons created in years prior, much of which ends up in landfills.
James Shaw
Shaw’s latest line of furniture puts some of that excess plastic to use, in a way that the British designer hopes will reignite consumers’ appreciation for the ubiquitous material. The Plastic Baroque includes coffee and side tables, and a wall-mounted lamp, all made from extruded plastic and glass. The plastic elements look like ropes made out of Play-doh, which makes it difficult to immediately understand how it’s influenced by baroque furniture from the 18th century, but Shaw explains: “these suites, generally comprising a bureau, a mirror, and two candle stands were the height of luxurious furnishing. These pieces reference this trope, reinterpreting these forms in a distorted and blobby manner, in the color scheme of a palace belonging to Catherine the Great.”
To build these, Shaw had to reconfigure how designers access plastic manufacturing. Typically, you’d have to go an enormous factory and use a plastic extrusion machine the size of a house. To make the process more small-batch, more local, he built his own extrusion gun that can emit molten plastic at about a one-inch diameter. It works a little like a hot glue gun, but bigger, and it’s loaded with old plastic collected from east London recycling centers.
An earlier version of the designer’s self-made plastic-spewing rifle. James Shaw
The bizarre Plastic Baroque pieces probably won’t join the ranks of iconic plastic furniture designs—this isn’t exactly the next Eames molded chair, or Kartell Ghost chair. But Shaw’s endeavoring to overturn some longstanding perceptions about materials and their worth: Even when Charles and Ray Eames were making their famous Molded chairs, they were trying to construct them out of plywood, not plastic. They just didn’t have the right technology for it at the time.
If anyone is up to the task, it’s Shaw, who is now a veteran at using weird designs to get people thinking about material and waste. His Well Proven Chair—made with designer Marjan van Aubel—is literally grown from leftover wood shavings and bio-resin, and looks like a wild, sea-foamy creature that you happen to sit on. It’s currently on display on MoMA.
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