Dutch artist and furniture designer Bente Hovendal is a deliberate, careful artist who puts great thought into each and every piece she creates. Working with raw lumber and a chainsaw, her furniture is complex but shines with the simple inner beauty of the natural materials.
Hovendal’s pieces look deceptively fragile. They have the appearance of thin, stacked discs of wood criss-crossed with cracks and wrinkles. But each piece of furniture is quite sturdy and has all of the natural strength of its raw materials.
The artist chooses to leave the “imperfections” in – and even to emphasize them – in order to mirror the perfectly imperfect nature of our own lives. The name of the furniture line is woodnwonder, a name that reflects a combination of natural materials and a sense of wonder and reverence for nature.
The sculptural designs are all individual; just like the trees from which they are made and the people who will eventually give them a home, no two will ever be alike.
