Ever thought of how you can use Haksons resin to actually freeze time or freeze nature and create a beautiful piece of furniture. Well, at the BohriAli office, we have been working with some of the most creative resin artists. Getting the correct materials to our artists is the everlasting aim. A constant inspiration for us has been the need to not disturb nature and explore how we can create without altering major characteristics of natural elements. We take you through a beautiful cabinet we made for ourselves using Haksons Resin, Bougainville flowers, papyrus slices, glass and wood!
Concept
We use live edge wood filled with cracks and knots and give it fresh life using resin filled in natural cavities without altering its composition. Coincidentally, we have a wonderful association with a company who preserves fresh fruits and vegetables using indigenous techniques and makes these wonderful slices available to us!
Our resin artist, Sapna, is also someone who specialises and makes the finest clear cast pendants with dried Bougainville flowers. With this in mind, we pondered over how we could get these various elements together in harmony with the fact that we were building a cabinet for ourselves!
During the course of this exploration, we also wanted it to be a practical solution. A cabinet typically would have three sides with a bottom and a top and an extensive openable shutter. How would we incorporate our thought process into each of these? Or did we need to? Glass is another material that is really similar to resin but also very very different in how it’s formed. The advantage with glass is the fact of how easy it is to use it in conjunction with the glossy, transparent nature of resin. And with this, came about this peaceful calm structure of a cabinet with glass and resin panels held together by carved wood.
Resin Cabinet Panels
For any resin project that involves a botanical element, it is imperative to get the perfect raw material seasoned using the correct processes. For this particular project, we have used dried bougainvillaea as well as fruit papyrus. There are various methods to dry these but here we have dried the flowers by book-pressing them. The papyrus slices were supplied to us completely dehydrated.
The cabinet had four resin panels. The base was violet ombre shades. The dried flowers and papyrus were added in layers succeeding the violet and ombre base. A coloured gradient was created and a transition of coloured to transparent resin studded with flowers and papyrus and eventually to clear glass became the defining identity of this design. In the other two panels, a base coat of clear resin was poured to have a see through absolutely water-like transparent panel.
Each panel was precisely designed with colour and placement of the bougainville flowers and fruit papyrus proof-read on the mockup. The execution involved carefully weighing the resin and making sure the viscosity was perfect to attain the balance we were looking for! Two panels were poured with 4 different shades and the other two panels had clear resin pours.
The base layer really set us up beautifully to add these apt pieces of nature in place and give them a place forever. Moving on, we placed the flowers and papyrus and then put a clear coat of resin to complete the panels. Each layer was about 5 mm thick!
Final Product – Glass and Resin Cabinet
The wooden frame was made minimalistic and keeping in mind the different characters it was going to encompass in it’s skeletal frame. The glass and resin panels brought the harmony that we wanted right from the design intent behind the artefact.
