MATERIAL NOTES #01
A basket.
A sculpture.
A bench.
A husband.
I have decided to start paying closer attention to the things that make me stop and look twice.
Not necessarily new things. Not necessarily beautiful things. Sometimes it is a material, a technique, an object, an artist or even a strange piece of popular culture that makes me wonder why something suddenly feels relevant.
Material Notes is a new series exploring those moments.
As I begin my MA in Craft, I want to look beyond my own practice with glass and follow what is happening across contemporary making. The materials, processes, artists and objects that challenge what we think a material is supposed to do.
So, for the first Material Note, I found myself looking at wicker.
We think we know wicker
Wicker is one of those materials that can almost disappear because it is so familiar.
Baskets. Garden furniture. Picnic hampers. Conservatories.
It has a long history and a very recognisable visual language. We tend to understand it through its function: something woven to contain, support or furnish.
But then you come across something like this.
The Wicker Story, founded by architect Priyanka Narula in Hyderabad, takes cane and rattan into much more fluid territory. Narula established the studio in 2019 as an exploration of how digital design processes could be translated into Indian craft and material systems. The studio uses computational ideas to develop complex forms, but the final pieces are woven by hand.
The result is furniture that can look less like a basket and more like architecture, sculpture or even something organic.
The bench I came across at Design Mumbai is a good example. Its continuous woven surface bends and folds into an almost impossible-looking form. The technique remains visible, but the expected shape of wicker furniture has been stretched considerably.
That is what interests me.
The material hasn't necessarily changed.
Our expectations of it have.
When craft meets computation
There is something particularly interesting about The Wicker Story because the work doesn't treat traditional craft and digital design as opposites.
Narula's practice translates digital and parametric processes into cane and rattan, using hand weaving to realise forms that could easily have been produced through much more industrial means. The studio describes this as a way of creating complex geometries while adapting digital processes to Indian craft and material systems.
This creates a useful tension.
The design can begin with algorithms, geometry and 3D modelling, but the final object still depends on the knowledge of the person doing the weaving.
The computer can describe the form.
The material and the maker still have to negotiate it.
For me, this is one of the more interesting directions in contemporary craft: not replacing traditional making with technology, but seeing what happens when the two begin to inform each other.
From wicker to something almost alive
Then there is Chris Wolston.
His Carabobo Amphora 1 combines woven rattan with worked aluminium to create something that sits somewhere between vessel, sculpture and strange organic object. Wolston's practice grew partly from experimenting with rattan alongside anodised aluminium, and he has continued to use weaving to soften and humanise more industrial materials.
His Nalgona chairs take this even further.
Woven Colombian mimbre is formed into chairs with arms, legs, hips and feet. They are functional objects, but they also behave like characters. Wolston has described the idea as creating a human form that embraces a human form.
This is where wicker becomes particularly strange.
It is no longer simply a surface or a structure.
It starts to have a body.
And then, rather unexpectedly, popular culture decided to take that idea literally.
The wicker husband
A recent article in Livingetc was what sent me properly down this particular rabbit hole.
It was about Wicker, a new romantic fantasy comedy directed by Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson.
The premise is difficult to ignore.
A lonely fisherwoman in a medieval seaside village asks a local basketmaker to make her a husband out of wicker.
Yes, really.
The resulting character, played by Alexander Skarsgård, is not a digital effect masquerading as a person. The production worked with New Zealand's Wētā Workshop to create a roughly 30-pound wicker suit fitted onto a 3D-printed body shell, with only limited digital effects around the eyes.
The costume itself uses lacquered bamboo-like strips rather than the willow or rush more traditionally associated with basketmaking in England and Europe.
So wicker has now moved from making a container to making a character.
It isn't holding the body. It is the body.
And then IKEA got involved
Perhaps the funniest part of this whole story is what happened next.
The internet started reacting to the wicker husband, and IKEA Australia joined in.
The company posted an image of its TOLKNING rattan bench with the words:
“Made from husband material.”
The caption simply added: “If you know, you know.” The post was a deliberate reference to the film and the online reaction around its wicker husband.
It is a small joke, but I think it reveals something much bigger about materials.
Wicker now carries a whole collection of associations.
It can mean traditional craft.
It can mean nostalgic furniture.
It can mean contemporary design.
It can mean sculpture.
It can mean a slightly surreal film character.
And, apparently, it can mean boyfriend material.
The material itself hasn't changed.
Its cultural meaning has.
Materials have memories
We often talk about materials through their physical properties.
Is it strong? Flexible? Lightweight? Durable? Can it be bent, woven, cast or carved?
But materials also have cultural properties.
They carry memories, associations and expectations.
A particular material can remind us of a place, a period of history, a domestic object or a particular kind of making. Those associations become part of how we understand the object before we have even properly looked at it.
This is why I find the contemporary treatment of wicker so interesting.
The makers aren't necessarily hiding its history.
They are using that history as part of the material.
The Wicker Story takes a traditional Indian weaving practice and connects it with computational design.
Chris Wolston takes Colombian mimbre and turns it into bodies.
Wicker turns basketry into a fictional person.
IKEA turns the same cultural moment into a joke about furniture.
Each one changes what we expect the material to mean.
Maybe we underestimated wicker
Perhaps the interesting thing isn't that wicker is suddenly coming back.
Maybe we are simply looking at it differently.
That is what I want to explore through Material Notes.
A series about materials, techniques, artists, objects and the unexpected places they lead.
As I begin my MA in Craft, I want to look beyond glass and follow these connections wherever they go. Sometimes that might lead to another material. Sometimes an artist. Sometimes an old technique being used in a new way. And occasionally, apparently, it might lead to a wicker husband and an IKEA advertising campaign.
I think that's probably a good place to start.
Material Notes #01: Wicker.
And apparently, we underestimated it.
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