Furniture Designs by Tortie Hoare

on 23/7/10

Tortie Hoare, a recent graduate in Furniture, Design and Craftsmanship from Bucks New University has already got her career off to a flying with recently winning an award at New Designers.

A return to craftsmanship & contemporary crafts has been an important trend direction recently & looks set to continue into Autumn Winter 2011-12, as in the age of austerity & less consumption when we do buy a product we want to connect & really value it. With Tortie Hoare's work she has really encompassed this by taking a process from medieval times of 'leather boiling' to create her beautiful, modern furniture collection.

^{Desk Designed By Tortie Hoare (Leather & Walnut) Photographer Paul Wilkinson}

The materials Tortie uses to make her range are woven aeroply, hessian and resin, upholstered in linen and leather. She first discovered this process when she was undertaking an industry project and wanted to create a 3D shape which could also be structural, from her research she came across the medieval process of boiling leather to create armour.

Taking this initial process with much experimentation with techniques such as 'steam bending' & 'clamping' she has been able to create contemporary furniture, such as her desk that encorporates a pocket for papers or a laptop. She has successfully created a piece of furniture with simple, clean lines where the leather and wood flow into one.

^{Chair Designed By Tortie Hoare, Photographer Paul Wilkinson}

The Trend Boutique particularly liked her printed linen chair which has a 'folkloric' charm to the piece. Whereas for the stool the leather is 'shrunk' around a removable jog to create both the structure and form. It has indents or 'dimples' where there would normally be buttons to create a play on the normal preconceptions of leather.

^{Stool Designed By Tortie Hoare (Leather & Ash) Photographer Paul Wilkinson}

For her 'ridge' seat Tortie sewed the leather pieces to create structure and then also combined the leather under-frame with the wooden legs to achieve a blending between the two materials used.

^{'Ridge' Chair Designed By Tortie Hoare, Photographer Paul Wilkinson}

The furniture created by Tortie Hoare is a great example of how old & new techniques can be combined together and surprisingly the art of 'boiling' leather or 'cuir bouilli' is having a renaissance with the work of Simon Hassan, an RCA graduate (2008) that also uses this process being featured in Wallpaper* magazine in their 'Handmade' edition.

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