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Journal Cork

Explore our Journal, a seasonal collection of images and musings that invites you to see Egg Collective through a new lens.

 

ON CORK & THE MEASURE OF THINGS - Material Musing

 
 

Time is the fourth dimension — Length. Width. Height. Time.

 
 

Anya Round Side Table in Natural Cork

Anya Eye Side Table in Dark Cork

 
 

As designers, these four dimensions describe what we do and how we spend our time. We measure. We contemplate scale. We consider hours of labor. We look back at what has come before, and we make plans for something that is yet to be. 

In this way, design can function as a form of time travel. Exploring pasts and predicting futures. 

 

Kerman Tables in Natural Cork

 
 
 

One clear example of this was our 2024 exhibition Designing Women IV: Eileen Gray’s House for Two Sculptors, where we reached across time to realize an unbuilt work of architecture designed 90 years prior by Eileen Gray.

 
 
 
 
 
 

We devoted almost two years to this project. Those years resulted in the fourth exhibition in our Designing Women Series, and in our latest design, the Eileen Mirror. Inspired by Gray’s textiles, the Mirror has a graphically patterned solid cork frame and is available in multiple dimensions. 

 

Side view of 24” diameter Eileen Mirror

 
 
 
 

24” diameter Eileen Mirror with Webster Stool

 

60” diameter Eileen Mirror with Ritter Dresser

 

24” diameter Eileen Mirror

 
 

How slippery is time even here with this one object? How and what do we measure? 

Eileen Mirror

Length 24 - 60 inches
Width 24 - 60 inches
Height 5 inches
Time …  ?

 
 
 

Eileen Gray, 1973, color photograph © National Museum of Ireland

 
 
 

Cork is a regenerative material. Bark is peeled from mature cork oak trees on a 9 year cycle. The bark can only start to be harvested after a tree is 25 years old. The trees can live for over 150 years.

It is possible therefore that the trees we can thank for our Eileen Mirrors were planted in the late 1800’s. In fact, the math lines up such that they could share Eileen’s birth year of 1878, and still be standing proudly. Or they could have been planted just as she was leaving the Earth in 1976 and only have seen their second harvest. 

In this way, craft can also function as a form of time travel. Through natural materials, we tap into the flow of Earth’s time. Stretching ourselves backwards to the timescale of a cork forest. Or farther …

 
 
 
 
 

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