Peter Marigold, Dodai Bench Dark (Medium), 2021

Peter Marigold's work is in the public collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum, UK. It has been exhibited internationally, including at MoMA New York, USA; Design Museum Holon, Israel; the Victoria & Albert Museum, UK; and 21_21 Design Sight, Japan. Commissions include projects for Bloomberg, UK; The Museum of Childhood, UK; Oyuna (Mongolian Cashmere); Kvadrat, Denmark; and a porcelain collection for Meissen, Germany.

Peter Marigold has created two significant collections for the gallery that focus on sculptural design in wood. Peter’s Cleft series is a collaboration with Japanese master craftsmen, Hinoki Kougei. They first partnered in 2012 for the Japan Creative project at Salone del Mobile in Milan, which brought together Western designers and Japanese craft artisans. Chuzo Tozawa, founder of Hinoki Kougei, proposed they use gigantic split logs to form the sides of their Dodai bench, finished with a covering made from handwoven igusa (rush grass). The result is a rich sensory experience; the cleft planes where the wood has been pulled apart and sanded back are highly tactile, coupled with the appealing organic aromas of Japanese Cypress and igusa grass. Peter’s partnership with Hinoki Kougei has continued in his collaborative project with Chuzo Tozawa’s son, Tadanori Tozawa. Their series of wall cabinets gives a frontal focus to the dramatic cleaving action. Based on the form of traditional medicine cabinets, these pieces are made from different woods, each carefully selected for their special qualities that are accentuated in the clefting process.

Peter’s Bleed collection is composed of a series of cedar wood cabinets. Simple linear forms are adorned with a contrastingly painterly surface patina, achieved through an innovative adaptation of ‘localised ebonising’. Peter begins the process by strategically placing steel hardware on the surface; he then uses acid to strip it of its protective zinc, so that it reacts over time with the tannins in the cedar. This produces an intricate bleeding pattern on the wood that in turn emphasises the warm tones and natural grain of the organic material.