Furniture as art - Joseph Walsh

I don't think there is another furniture designer and manufacturer that makes my heartbeat quicken every time I look at his creations. I've written about furniture designers whose work is more art than furniture, but as far as I'm concerned, none of them manage to do it at this level. What follows will be about furniture as art and how Joseph Walsh thinks about and transforms wood.

Joseph Walsh is a young Irish designer and woodworker already known all over the world. He is one of those who are ahead of his time and you'll immediately understand why I say that. Joseph was born in Cork, Ireland in 1980. He started working with wood from the age of 8, learning the trade from his grandfather, a carpenter. By the age of 12 he could make a cupboard from start to finish on his own without any help. At the same time, he was constantly drawing exquisite furniture designs. He decided to quit school so that he could have time to draw and work on his creations.

At the age of 19 he set up his own studio in a family-owned space and by the age of 23 he had works in the National Museum of Ireland. But international recognition came in 2008 when, at the invitation of the American Irish Historical Society in New York, she had a solo exhibition, which led to numerous private commissions and an invitation to exhibit at the Art and Design Pavilion in London.

His works are now in private collections as well as in museums and exhibitions. The Duke of Devonshire's passion for his work is well known, and he has an impressive collection at Chatsworth House in Bakewell, UK. Works by Joseph Walsh can also be found at the Pompidou Center in Paris, the Museum of Arts and Design in New York and the Japanese Embassy in Dublin.

Walsh works with ash wood, which he cuts, laminates, and curves into sinuous lines that make you think of ribbons. In the workshop, the ash timber is cut and dried again to balance. The strips are then glued together and curved into shapes reminiscent of nature. When the final shape of the furniture has been achieved, the finishing begins. The wood is carefully sanded to the desired fineness and then treated with natural oils. Sometimes, for some models, the wood is textured with brushes to enhance the grain. It's all done by hand, and there's not much to do with molds. Joseph only makes one-offs or very small series.

The work is still carried out on the family property, in an old potato warehouse transformed into a beautiful studio-workshop. From a single employee in his own workshop, he has now grown to 20 employees, all of whom are highly skilled craftsmen, graduates of prestigious schools in Ireland, as well as France, Japan, Argentina, Portugal and Israel. Joseph now does more of the design and planning, leaving the execution to his team.

Perhaps his best-known piece is the canopied bed from the Enignum collection, named after the Latin words Enigma and Lignum (wood). About this bed The Wall Street Journal wrote in 2011 that it's one of those things you think can't exist and wonder how it can be "amazingly sensual and brilliantly technical at the same time".

In recent years Walsh has started working with other materials. He combined wood with resin and was much happier with the result than when combining it with glass because of the interesting textures. Resin is also fluid, the result is always surprising.

At some point he also associated marble with his work. Connemara marble, renowned for its colors, was a favorite. Together with his team and a specialized firm he developed an intricate technology that fuses resin and marble, making them seem to merge. The table made with this technology seems to float above the ground.

Joseph Walsh's belief is that we can increase the quality of life by surrounding ourselves with objects that have value over functionality and aesthetics, that have intelligence in their creation. For his outstanding achievements University College Cork, part of the National University of Ireland, awarded him an honorary doctorate in 2015.