Babiche is a style of interwoven leather or gut, traditionally used in the making of snowshoes. The First Nations people of eastern Canada passed on the technique to French settlers who incorporated it into their chair designs. Popularized in the 1600’s, the babiche chair has become a familiar icon of traditional Quebec furniture design. For their Awadare collection, Montréal/Milan design collective Samare have revisited this traditional fusion. Working with local welders and Huron weavers, Samare have juxtaposed the charming, hand-worked quality of babiche against rigid metal structures. The intent is a Canadian language for the international market. Appropriately, the collection, which just launched at Commissaires will debut internationally at Salone Satellite in Milan. Shown here are the Mountie stool and Territory Chair. -Michael Erdmannvia The CANADIAN DESIGN RESOURCE » Furniture
Tag: Samare
Mush! Lounge by Samare
We went to see the North American premiere of Awadare tonight at design gallery Commissaires in Montreal. Awadare is a furniture collection that combines austere painted steel frames with babiche, a leather weaving technique with aboriginal origins that many will recognize from traditional snowshoes. The juxtaposition is striking, the two extremes of structured manufactured modernity and an ancient organic form. That’s Mush! above, a lounge chair with a metal base that resembles the runners on a sled. Awadare is the first collection by Samare, a design collective made up of four architect designers (Laurie Bedikian, Nicolas Bellavance-Lecompte, Mania Bedikian and Patrick Meirim de Barros) who first met at the University of Montreal. After Commissaires the collection is off to Milan and SaloneSatellite, the launch pad for up-and-coming designers.
via MoCo Loco: