Jill Platner Sculpture

Master jeweler applies her metalsmithing talent to sculpture
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Massachusetts-born beauty Jill Platner, known for the beautifully organic forms of her exquisite jewelry, has always yearned to apply her metal-manipulating skills to her passion for sculpture. This week, realizing the career-long dream, she opened a month-long show of her sculptural work in NYC.

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Platner discovered her love of metal working in NYC while attending the Parson’s School of Design, getting into the jewelry business as a way to accumulate enough cash to make sculptural pieces. Years later, operating out of the same Soho space, she’s managed to create a fantastic installation. Produced under an ambitious timeline, the project started three months ago when Platner rallied a team of friends and colleagues to produce the series of pieces, a play on scale following the form of many of her well-known jewelry designs.

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Resulting sculptures, constructed from steel, copper and bronze, resonate with Platner’s strong, elegant style. The hearty, interactive pieces are meant to live either indoors or out and, like her jewelry, beg to be touched. In the gallery setting, the dramatic installation uses harsh light to cast shadows across and through the pieces, creating silhouettes almost as enchanting at the work itself.

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Check out the installation at 111 Crosby street in New York City (next door to Platner’s store) from now until the 31 May 2011; it is open daily to the public from noon to 5pm.

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The Creators Project Coachella

Lights and music collide for a fantastic display of digital technology at California’s Coachella festival
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The concept behind The Creators Project is not new—mix the social, the artistic and the scientific. The resulting experiences the initiative produces though, is astounding. Founded by Vice Magazine and Intel, the altruistic enterprise seeks to support the creative community through a series of collaborations that push the boundaries of digital technology. At this year’s Coachella music festival, the team worked with the British multi-disciplinary collective United Visual Artists and Goldenvoice concerts on a 3D Rubik’s Cube-like installation of light and music, unfolding over three days on Coachella’s main stage.

Using bespoke software and LED light projection, UVA have created an immersive experience that will serve as both a platform for performance and as a standalone light and sound sculpture. To top it off, Vice has chosen key bands—Interpol, Animal Collective and Arcade Fire—to program distinct visual identities to coincide with their live performances. For the Arcade Fire show, 2,000 lightweight balls equipped with LED lights and infrared receivers will be released into the crowd. As the balls drop, they’ll be controlled by a series of IR transmitters, altering the LED effects in each ball, and painting various lighting designs across the crowd for an effect that feels like a New Years Eve Balloon drop meets War of The Worlds.

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Through The Studio, a sector of The Creators Project that aims to encourage collaboration between artists, a number of smaller installations will illuminate the festival. Director Jonathan Glazer is working with the band Spiritualized to create a physical manifestation of their best-known song, “Ladies and Gentlemen, We Are Floating in Space,” which will be an arched cathedral of light and sound. Interpol is working with David Lynch, playing with the notion of surveillance, and Black Dice and Animal Collective have collaborated on a video.

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The Creators Project is not only making visuals we actually want to watch, but it’s also adding a whole new dimension to watching live music. We wish Pink Floyd was still around to see this.


Dip in Space by Matali Crasset and HEAD – Genève

Dip in Space by Matali Crasset

Milan 2011: visitors lower objects into pits of molten wax then hang them from the ceiling to solidify in this installation created by students of the Haute Ecole d’Art et de Design in Geneva at workshops with designer Matali Crasset and curator Alexandra Midal.

Dip in Space by Matali Crasset

Called Dip in Space, the room at Tortona Design Week has a sloping floor to accommodate the vats of wax beneath, with a round wooden structure and pulley system for dipping built round each one.

Dip in Space by Matali Crasset

The environment will change constantly as the week progresses and more parts are coated in red wax.

Dip in Space by Matali Crasset

The installation remains on show until 17 April at Via Tortona 32, Milan. See all our stories about Milan 2011 »

Dip in Space by Matali Crasset

See all our stories about Matali Crasset »

Dip in Space by Matali Crasset

Photographs are by Baptiste Coulon.

Here are some more details from Head – Genève:


Third participation by Head – Genève in the Milan International Furniture Fair : the exhibition Dip in Space, a festive environment celebrating design created by its students in a workshop led by matali crasset and Alexandra Midal is to be found from 12 to 17 April in the heart of the vibrant Zona Tortona. Created during a series of workshops directed by matali crasset in 2010-2011, the exhibition Dip in Space brought together students from the Spaces and communication Masters in Design and the Bachelors courses in Fashion Design and Interior Architecture / Space Design.

Dip in Space by Matali Crasset

Although the design generally presented in Milan is evaluated according to functional criteria, Dip in Space offers a new approach to the means of creating and standardizing space. Left to its cyclothymias, Dip in Space is divided up into two worlds : the first, with glowing red magma set above the platform, represents the mind of the designer in full ferment, while the second invites visitors to experiment, in a fun and convivial way, with the invention and production of forms. They are invited to dip supports into wax-filled containers from which they withdraw objects, each one of them unique. The forms they produce are assembled in situ to constitute a collective work in progress. A quasi-organic space, Dip in Space celebrates the plasticity of matter and the amusing creation of forms.

Dip in Space by Matali Crasset

Throughout the exhibition, walls and objects will gradually blend together to form a single entity in which, from the clothing worn by the representatives to the cocktails served to visitors, the seating places/points and the projected images, everything combines to form a « total art work ». The continually metamorphosing environment illustrates how design is a place for individual, participatory and democratic inventiveness.

Dip in Space by Matali Crasset

A sensorial oasis of relaxation and calm, Dip in Space offers a fun and convivial interlude amid the frenzy of Milan during Design Week. Offbeat and festive, the exhibition encourages us to reconsider the issues of contemporary design by transcending the primacy of function in favour of experience.

Dip in Space: Head – Genève with matali crasset
Torneria 3 – Tortona Locations Via Tortona 32, Milan Exhibition runs from 12 to 17 April 2011, 10.00 – 21.00


See also:

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Double Side by
Matali Crasset
Quand Jim se Relaxe by
Matali Crasset
Chambre d’Ami by
Matali Crasset

Fourteen Black

Artist Tofer Chin’s black stalagmite sculptures invade a Rio de Janeiro park
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The 30 mosquito bites that eventually landed him in the hospital from a Dengue scare didn’t stop artist Tofer Chin from installing his latest show in Rio de Janeiro’s Parque Lage. “Fourteen Black,” as the Los Angeles native calls it, runs until 30 April 2011 as part of Rojo’s Nova project.

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To address the project’s theme about the absence of light, Chin placed 14 tall, black triangles—a shape that regularly appears in his work—around the Patos Lagoon in the park, located in the Jardim Botanico neighborhood. The wooden, acrylic-coated “black stalagmites,” as he calls them, are meant to be “living and breathing souls, ghosts, spirits, voids, shadows.”

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In contrast to the abundant, bright, green surroundings, they work to emphasize the existence of dark, shady areas in the park and play on the idea of light versus absorption of light. Also, because of the way that light bounces off the sides of the angular sculptures, they give the scene a surreal digital touch.

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You can get a behind-the-scenes look of the artist installing his work as well as other artists participating in the Nova project here .


Dig

Explorations in form as artists carve out a foam-filled room
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Fresh off Perrier-Jouët‘s Bi-Centenaire Project (more on that later), Daniel Arsham has a new installation and performance piece debuting this week in NYC. “Dig”, in collaboration with Arsham’s firm Snarkitecture, comprises of completely filling the gallery space at the Storefront for Art and Architecture with white architectural foam. Arsham and his fellow Snarkitects will occupy the space during the monthlong installation, excavating the foam filled gallery with simple tools to transform the space into a cavernous experiment in form.

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The tunneling continues through 4 April 2011, and as performances until 22 April 2011. The exhibition is invitation-only, but passersby can sneak a peak from the street or can follow the progress from start to finish on OHWOW’s site.


Whatami by stARTT

WHATAMI by stARTT

This pavilion by Italian firm stARTT has won the first international edition of the MoMA/P.S.1 Young Architects Program and will be installed outside the Zaha Hadid-designed MAXXI museum in Rome this June. See this year’s New York installation in yesterday’s story.

WHATAMI by stARTT

As inaugural winners of the YAP_MAXXI award stARTT’s installation, entitled Whatami, will feature a series of mini hills around the concrete plaza with pools of water in between.

WHATAMI by stARTT

The artificial landscape will be littered with clusters of funnel-shaped canopies representing flowers.

WHATAMI by stARTT

WHATAMI will open in June this year at the same time as Interboro Partner’s winning design for their installation in the courtyard of the P.S.1 Contemporary Art Centre in New York. (See our earlier story)

WHATAMI by stARTT

See all our stories on past winners of the Young Architect Program »

WHATAMI by stARTT

Here’s some more information from The Museum of Modern Art:


stARTT SELECTED AS WINNER OF THE INAUGURAL YOUNG ARCHITECTS PROGRAM AT THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF XXI CENTURY ARTS (MAXXI) IN ROME

stARTT’s WHATAMI to open in the Courtyard of MAXXI in June

NEW YORK, February 16, 2011—The Museum of Modern Art, MoMA PS1, and the National Museum of XXI Century Arts of Rome announce Interboro Partners of Brooklyn, NY, as the winner of the 12th annual Young Architects Program in New York, and start, of Rome, as the winner of the first annual YAP_MAXXI Young Architects Program in Rome.

WHATAMI by stARTT

Now in its 12th edition, the Young Architects Program at MoMA and MoMA PS1 has been committed to offering emerging architectural talent the opportunity to design and present innovative projects, challenging each year’s winners to develop highly innovative designs for a temporary, outdoor installation at MoMA PS1 that provides shade, seating, and water. The architects must also work within guidelines that address environmental issues, including sustainability and recycling.

WHATAMI by stARTT

For the first time, MoMA and MoMA PS1 are partnering with another institution, MAXXI in Rome, to create the first international edition of the Young Architects Program. stARTT has been chosen from among five European finalists to create an innovative event space in the MAXXI piazza opening in June.

WHATAMI by stARTT

WHATAMI by stARTT is based on the manufacturing of an artificial archipelago-hill, generating smaller green areas in the garden and potentially outside the museum. The hill works as a garden, injecting “green” into the concrete plateau of the museum’s outdoor space, allowing it to serve as a stage and/or parterre for concerts and other events, or as a space to rest and look at the museum itself.

WHATAMI by stARTT

The artificial landscape will be punctuated by large “flowers” providing light, shadow, water, and sound. The materials proposed for the installation involve a two-fold recycling process, the supplying of the materials for the construction (straw, geo-textile, plastic) and the dismantling of the “hill” (turf, lighting).

WHATAMI by stARTT

Opened in May 2010, MAXXI was designed by Zaha Hadid and awarded Royal Institute of British Architect’s (RIBA) Stirling Prize for architecture, and has already gained a place among the elite international contemporary art and architecture museums.

WHATAMI by stARTT
The other YAP_MAXXI finalists were Raffaella De Simone/Valentina Mandalari (Palermo); Ghigos Ideas (Lissone/Mi, Davide Crippa, Barbara Di Prete and Francesco Tosi); Asif Khan (London, United Kingdom); and Langarita Navarro Arquitectos (Madrid, Spain, María Langarita and Víctor Navarro).

WHATAMI by stARTT

Pippo Ciorra, Senior Curator of Architecture at MAXXI, explains, “We’re very happy with the results of this program for three main reasons. First, the collaboration with MoMA proved as effective and productive as we hoped, finally allowing us a surprising insight into the most recent research in terms of architecture, public space, and landscape.

WHATAMI by stARTT

Second, we were able to discover an unexpected positive quality of answers by the Italian and European young (under 35) architects involved in the project, all proposing fascinating, innovative and well developed proposals. Third, we’re delighted that we were able to choose a winning proposal which incorporates a MAXXI_specific approach to the issues of ecology, recycle, and public space.”

WHATAMI by stARTT


See also:

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Holding Pattern by
Interboro Partners
Afterparty by
MOS at P.S.1
Mexican Pavilion for Shanghai Expo 2010 by Slot.

The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over The Lazy Dog

Artist Michael Riedel’s first introspective show reinterprets source code as textual printed matter

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A man seemingly obsessed with extraction, abstraction and repetition, Michael Riedel takes printed matter and toys with it until most sense is lost. With an almost “Matrix” style of approach, Riedel uses text to “write with writing,” a technique in which he excerpts the works of others in order to make his own statement. His current work—on display at the David Zwirner gallery in an exhibition titled “The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over The Lazy Dog“—finally sees Riedel use himself as his subject.

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Culling HTML code from websites that feature Riedel (mostly MoMA and David Zwirner), the Frankfurt-based artist created massive linear collages by copying and pasting the text in InDesign. By layering and turning the text, the arrangement appears nonsensical at first glance, but there is a clear pattern defined on each canvas. There is also seemingly a theme for each of the silk-screened “poster paintings,” with individual keyboard commands like “click,” “print,” “color” and “alt” highlighted in bold type.

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Hung against a wallpaper backdrop of even more black-and-white code, the canvases are accented by colorful circles—a new foray for Riedel. The color not only helps to balance out the web of text, but with their geometric pie-like structure they also seem like the spinning beach ball Mac users encounter when their computer is processing.

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A pangram used to test typewriters and keyboards, here “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” underlines the detached relationship Riedel found between text, canvas, paper, and architecture.

The exhibition opens today and runs through 19 March 2011 at David Zwirner gallery, where he will also be signing his catalogs on 5 March 2011 from 4-6pm.


Holding Pattern by Interboro Partners

Holding Pattern by Interboro Partners

Brooklyn studio Interboro Partners have won this year’s MoMA/P.S.1 Young Architects Program competition to design a temporary installation in the courtyard of the P.S.1 Contemporary Art Centre in New York.

Holding Pattern by Interboro Partners

The installation, entitled Holding Pattern, will feature a twisted rope canopy stretched over the courtyard.

Holding Pattern by Interboro Partners

The space below will feature benches, mirrors, ping-pong tables and floodlights, creating a temporary urban landscape where the MoMA/P.S.1 Warm Up summer music series will be hosted. Holding Pattern will open in June this year.

Holding Pattern by Interboro Partners

MoMA and P.S.1 are also partnering with the Zaha Hadid-designed MAXXI museum in Rome to create the first international edition of the Young Architects Program, with Italian studio stARTT chosen to create an event space in the museum’s piazza. More information to follow.

See last year’s installation by SO-IL in our earlier story.

See all our stories on past winners of the Young Architect Program »

The following information is from The Museum of Modern Art:


INTERBORO PARTNERS SELECTED AS WINNER OF THE 2011 YOUNG ARCHITECTS PROGRAM AT MoMA PS1 IN NEW YORK

Interboro Partners’ Holding Pattern to open in the Courtyard of MoMA PS1 in June

NEW YORK, February 16, 2011—The Museum of Modern Art, MoMA PS1 announce Interboro Partners of Brooklyn, NY, as the winner of the 12th annual Young Architects Program in New York. Now in its 12th edition, the Young Architects Program at MoMA and MoMA PS1 has been committed to offering emerging architectural talent the opportunity to design and present innovative projects, challenging each year’s winners to develop highly innovative designs for a temporary, outdoor installation at MoMA PS1 that provides shade, seating, and water. The architects must also work within guidelines that address environmental issues, including sustainability and recycling. For the first time, MoMA and MoMA PS1 are partnering with another institution, MAXXI in Rome, to create the first international edition of the Young Architects Program.

Interboro Partners, drawn from among five finalists, will design a temporary urban landscape for the 2011 Warm Up summer music series in MoMA PS1’s outdoor courtyard.

Interboro Partners’ Holding Pattern brings an eclectic collection of objects including benches, mirrors, ping-pong tables, and floodlights, all disposed under a very elegant and taut canopy of rope strung from MoMA PS1’s wall to the parapet across the courtyard. Creating an unobstructed space, the design incorporates for the first time the entire space of MoMA PS1’s courtyard under a single grand structure, while creating an environment focusing on the audience as much as the Warm Up performance. A key component of the theme is recycling; objects in the space will be donated to the community at the conclusion of the summer. The designers met with local businesses and organizations including a taxi cab company, senior and day care centers, high schools, settlement houses, the local YMCA, library, and a greenmarket to determine what components of their installation could be used by those organizations following the Warm Up summer music series.

Incorporating objects that can subsequently be used by these organizations is a means of strengthening MoMA PS1’s ties to the local Long Island City community.
The other finalists for this year’s MoMA PS1 Young Architects Program were FormlessFinder (New Haven, CT/Brooklyn, NY, Julian Rose and Garrett Ricciardi), MASS Design Group (Boston, MA, Michael Murphy), Matter Architecture Practice (Brooklyn, NY, Sandra Wheeler and Alfred Zollinger), and IJP (London/Cambridge, MA, George L. Legendre). An exhibition of the five finalists’ proposed projects as well as YAP_MAXXI’s five finalists’ proposed projects will be on view at MoMA over the summer. It will be organized by Barry Bergdoll, MoMA Philip Johnson Chief Curator, with Whitney May, Department Assistant, Department of Architecture and Design, The Museum of Modern Art.

Mr. Bergdoll explains, “Simple materials that transform a space to create a kind of public living room and rec room are trademarks of this young Brooklyn firm. Interboro is interested in creating elegant and unpretentious spaces with common materials. Their work has both a modesty and a commitment quite at odds with the luxury and complex computer-generated form that has prevailed in the city in recent years. With a few gestures they transform parts of the city to achieve new temporary atmospheres and attract new participants.”

Klaus Biesenbach, MoMA PS1 Director and MoMA Chief Curator at Large, adds, “MoMA PS1 is very excited about the innovative architecture of Interboro, which describes the famous MoMA PS1 courtyard as one architectural volume, especially since the YAP 2011 opening will coincide with the much anticipated opening of the new MoMA PS1 entrance kiosk by Andrew Berman Architects.”


See also:

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Pole Dance by
SO-IL at P.S.1
Afterparty by
MOS at P.S.1
Public Farm One by Work Architecture Company

Nothing Happens For A Reason

Tobias Rehberger’s mind-bending optical illusions take up residence at a Finnish cafe

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German artist Tobias Rehberger likes to shake things up. Since stepping on the scene 15 years ago, he’s turned to a variety of mediums to toy with perception, consistently challenging his audience to see the “things which cannot be seen.” His latest work transforms the interior of a cafe in Finland’s cultural capital Turku into a mind-boggling display of criss-crossing lines, an installation he conceived in collaboration with Artek.

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Logomo Cafe, as it’s called, is the second collaboration between Rehberger and Artek, and a more subdued extension of the first. In 2009 the creative Finnish design studio tapped Rehberger to draw on the decorative WWI “razzle dazzle” style of painting to create a “visually disorienting environment” for the cafeteria at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni. Debuting at the Venice Biennale, the dizzying array of harsh black and white stripes and contrasting geometric furniture made for a Beetlejuice-like effect, winning him a Golden Lion award.

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While the Logomo installation draws on a similar palette and stripe-obsessed sensibility as the cafeteria, this time Rehberger came up with a more airy design, using longer lines throughout the space, extending them onto the windows and accenting only with neon orange.

The Rehberger installation will be on view through 18 December 2011 at the Logomo Cafe in Turku, Finland.


The Pond by Raw Edges

The Pond by Raw Edges

London designers Yael Mer and Shay Alkalay of Raw Edges created an animated pond at the Bloomberg offices in London using equipment the company had thrown away.

The Pond by Raw Edges

Called The Pond, the installation featured an animation by Oscar Narud spanning 60 discarded computer monitors, showing fish, dragon flies and ducks darting between the screens.

The Pond by Raw Edges

40 wooden pallets were used to make seating around the pond, where workers can gather during breaks.

The Pond by Raw Edges

The installation was initiated by Arts Co as part of their Waste Not Want Not project commissioned by Bloomberg Philanthropy.

The Pond by Raw Edges

More about Raw Edges on Dezeen »

The Pond by Raw Edges

Here are some more details from the designers:


The Pond
Yael Mer & Shay Alkalay

“The Pond’ is a seating environment constructed from 40 discarded wooden pallets encircling a recessed pond made from 60 redundant Bloomberg computer monitors. These are arranged to look as though they have been thrown into it landing untidily on top of each other. Across the linked screens runs an animation created especially by designer Norwegian designer Oscar Narud. Within the animation are several repeating cycles of activity – a duck paddles after a dragonfly, a small fish darts in and out among stones, a butterfly flits across the water and a frog leaps over lily pads and into the water.

The work is purposefully raw in construction, mimicking a natural outdoor landscape and drawing attention to the materiality of the waste used. The irony of this bucolic pond scene is that over 99 tonnes of domestic and industrial waste goes into landfill in the UK annually fundamentally impacting on the composition of this natural world.

About The Designers

Israeli-born Yael Mer and Shay Alkalay set up their London-based design studio Raw Edges after graduating from London’s Royal College of Art.

Their work is playful and imaginative yet functional and desirable and tries to continually challenge the basic premises of why a designed object has to be the way it is and how it functions.

Since their graduation show at the Royal College of Art in 2006, Raw Edges have received several highly respected awards including The British Council Talented Award, iF Gold Award, Dutch Design Award, Wallpaper* Design Award 2009 and the Elle Decoration International Design Award for best furniture of 2008_09 and just recently the Designer of the Future Award for 2009 from Design Miami/ Basel.

About Arts Co

Arts Co has been variously described as a ‘platform for talent’ and a ‘unique provider of solutions across the arts.’ Founded by Isabella Macpherson and Sigrid Wilkinson in 2007 Arts Co has its own curating programme, and connects individuals and companies with artists, designers and architects.

‘Waste Not Want Not’ is the latest in a series of specially commissioned art and design projects that bring the best of emerging international talent into the heart of Bloomberg’s London office.

Commissioned by Bloomberg Philanthropy ‘Waste Not Want It’ provides a platform for some of the UK’s most dynamic artists and designers through the commission of unique furniture and art installations made almost entirely out of Bloomberg’s own waste. From cable flex to cardboard boxes, keyboards to computer mice, the waste materials traditionally stored in Bloomberg’s off site warehouses have been startlingly reinvented into technically innovative and environmentally responsible chairs, tables and interactive art works to excite and stimulate the employees and visitors who interact with them from the moment they enter the building.


DezeenTV: The Pond by Raw Edges

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See also:

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The Coiling Collection
by Raw Edges
Bench by Raw Edges
for Bench 10
Tailored Wood by Raw Edges
for Cappellini