Sustainable company Grain has just introduced their new Clover furniture line made of cork. In September of this year, the collection debuted at Colony in New York. Designed by Chelsea and James Minola, they say the line is a further exploration of one of the most inspiring natural materials they’ve worked with.
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The Clover line introduces dark brown cork, which the designers began to explore in the past year through a custom client project. In fact, dark brown cork is toasted cork. This allows furniture makers to use cork that is discolored or otherwise unusable for top-of-the-line furniture. Using such cork eliminates waste material and creates a new, richly colored material for furniture makers to work with.
Related: This tiny house is insulated with cork and powered by solar
Grain says they started with a light and floral feel for the collection, but it ended up more grounded and architectural. The shapes shift with light, shadow and movement. Plus, the pieces in this collection have the look of a chessboard or clover.
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The cork is harvested from the outer bark of the cork oak tree every nine years — a process that does not harm the tree. This makes cork a renewable resource as well as a powerful carbon sink to sequester carbon and prevent it from entering the atmosphere.
The interesting thing about cork oak trees is that the more bark that is harvested, the more carbon is absorbed. Grain says that because of this unique feature of this material, they began integrating cork into studio practice and made it part of their Climate Neutral goals for footprint reduction in 2022.
Goods from Grain are made to order, so there is no waste introduced in large manufacturing batches. If you would like to see the new Clover collection, check out their website below.
Images via Ben Blood
