A Designer Who Gives Christmas Trees an Afterlife

Many people feel a sense of regret when it comes time to dispose of a Christmas tree. After being decorated and celebrated, the tree is unceremoniously abandoned, which can seem both heartless and wasteful.

Fabien Capello, a French designer who lives in London, decided to do something about that. Since 2009, Mr. Capello has been making furniture out of Christmas trees he finds on the street.

(1) ___________________________________________________________

When I was still a student at the Royal College of Art in London, I, basically, started an investigation on where the wood in D.I.Y. shops and wood suppliers was actually coming from, and how it ended up in the city. During my research, I saw some facts about Christmas trees, saying it was the moment when the biggest amount of wood was shipped into the city. You can find different facts and numbers, but most of them say that around a million trees arrive, every year, in London. And I just thought that was quite an amazing thing, because at the end of the festive period, after Christmas and New Year’s Eve you can find them in the streets because people are just throwing them away.

(2)_____________________________________________________________

There is this idea that you actually buy a tree and cherish it so much for a short period of time, and then you just throw it away. I thought it would be quite interesting to use this material. I wanted to do something that could come back into the house.

(3)______________________________________________________________

It’s quite an ugly wood, actually. It’s probably one of the ugliest trees ever, if you just see the trunk. Because it grows so fast, there is almost no grain. I did experiments to turn the trees into wood, removing the bark and doing this sort of chopping, which is the pattern on the legs. So I’ve been finding all sorts of techniques to work with it.

(4)_____________________________________________________________

No. Christmas trees are the wood that we consume at the youngest stage of the tree, because they are only two or three years old. You need time to get a beautiful wood — a tree needs to grow, and it can take 100 years sometimes. This one is really, really quite fast-growing, which is why it’s not quite so beautiful.

(5)_____________________________________________________________

Yes. Some of them, the carving is made with a machine, but everything is controlled by the hand. It’s very simple tools, like a belt sander, a band saw and a drill.

The New York Times

<== попередня сторінка	\|	наступна сторінка ==>
UNIT EIGHT.	\|	A Thermostat That's Clever, Not Clunky

Не знайшли потрібну інформацію? Скористайтесь пошуком google:

Генерація сторінки за: 0.004 сек.