Plying Their Trade

Sun Herald

Sunday August 5, 2007

Stephen Lacey

A new generation of designers is discovering the versatility of plywood, Stephen Lacey writes.

STEP inside an Egyptian pyramid and the last thing you'd expect to find is evidence of a primitive form of plywood. But those pharaohs obviously knew a thing or two about construction. Ditto the Chinese, who centuries ago glued pieces of shaved timber together to create furniture.

It seems that plywood has been with us forever. And yet the first official patent for plywood wasn't granted until 1865 (in the US). Australians have been manufacturing plywood since 1907. Sydney company Beale used plywood veneer to finish its grand pianos. By 1944 there were about 25 plywood mills throughout the nation.

Nowadays plywood is used for everything from furniture to entire houses. The reason for its popularity? It's versatile, strong, lightweight, easily transported, relatively affordable and, if used correctly, beautiful.

Early pioneers

Nobody did more to popularise the use of plywood for furniture than American design duo Charles and Ray Eames. The married couple began experimenting with moulding plywood back in the early 1940s, creating plywood splints for injured naval servicemen in WWII.

Following the war, the Eameses created a range of moulded plywood furniture, including chairs, tables and wall screens. The chairs, which are still produced today by Herman Miller, are 20th-century design icons (Time magazine actually referred to the Eames moulded plywood chair as the design of the century).

Recently, Herman Miller released the LCW (Lounge Chair Wood) chair in eight new colours (red, green, orange, purple, black, light blue, white and yellow). The stains allow the natural grain of the birch veneer to show through. The LCW can still be ordered in the more traditional cherry, walnut and natural ash.

The ply revolution

A whole generation of up-and-coming Australian designers is discovering the benefits of plywood. Many of these designs are driven by the flat-pack revolution, which enables products to be shipped cheaply and assembled on site.

Arne Christiansen of Woodmark believes there could be many reasons for the plywood renaissance. "You can make a lot of interesting shapes from plywood and this is definitely appealing to young designers," Christiansen says.

Some of Woodmark's most beautiful designs are from plywood. The Leve, by Sydney-based Gary Galego, 30, is an example. Galego, who was a finalist in The Sydney Morning Herald's Young Designer of the Year competition in 2002, utilises European birch plywood to create a chair that is sculptural and comfortable. "I enjoy working with plywood," he says. "It's an accessible material and affordable, which makes it appealing to emerging designers who don't have a lot of capital."

Galego says there is currently a trend among young designers to use CNC (computer numerical control) machining to laser-cut plywood sheets, which are then slotted together to form a 3-D object. "This technology has been around for at least a decade but only now are people using it."

To create the Leve chair, Galego takes plywood to the next level, actually moulding the raw veneers. The slots in the chair's seat and back allow it to be bent without snapping.

Galego says the biggest problem with this way of working plywood is the scarcity of moulders in Australia. "There's only one in Melbourne and one in Sydney who will bother with it," he says. "And because it's so labour intensive, the product becomes quite expensive."

Star of the showVivid is an annual furniture design competition held since 2003 as part of Melbourne's Furnitex. The competition is open to design students or emerging designers. At this year's Vivid many designers used plywood.

Ian Factor is a recent graduate of the Sturt School for Wood in Mittagong. Factor entered his Stack of Drawers in Vivid. The design is made up of individual plywood drawer units that are connected by magnets and can be stacked together in any combination.

"Plywood has many benefits for me," Factor says. "It's a very stable material that doesn't shrink or swell as much as solid timber.

"I also think it's a very attractive material, which is why I like to expose its edge. I'm not trying to hide the fact that I'm using plywood.

"Plus, it's an environmentally sound material; it uses all of the parts of the tree. The plywood I use is FSC (Forestry Stewardship Council) certified, which means the source of the timber is from a well-managed, sustainable forest."

Melbourne-based Yuichiro Nakano also entered Vivid this year. Nakano was recently listed by Monument magazine among the top 40 design graduates in Australia. He was also shortlisted for Design Boom in Milan, 2006. His Vivid entry - Shadow - is a plywood magazine rack in the shape of a small dog.

"Plywood has that Scandinavian/Danish appeal to me," Nakano explains. "It's suitable for a contemporary environment and it gives warmth and emotion."

© 2007 Sun Herald

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