A body made of wood
- Peter creates organically-shaped furniture and homewares
- He has developed his own techniques combining stack lamination and coopering
- Pieces are typically painted with milk paint, which gets better with age
Keunho Peter Park was born in the USA and grew up in South Korea, where he studied painting. One day in art class, someone showed him how to stretch a canvas. “That was exactly when I fell in love with the act of making. Soon I realised I was more interested in making functional objects, and I got into woodworking,” he says. Peter moved back to the USA where he obtained a masters in woodworking and furniture design and launched his workshop, Studio Spong, in Philadelphia. Today, his production ranges from furniture to musical instruments and vessels, all inspired by nature and the human body. “My preferred pieces to work on are chairs and sitting units, which I see as an extension of the human body,” he says.
INTERVIEW
I have adapted multiple techniques to create furniture that flows organically without using too much wood. I call it my segmented carving technique. Instead of bonding multiple layers together or steam bending the wood, I cut a flat board into different angles, then glue them back together to get a curve.
I mainly work with domestic species like American white oak, black walnut, maple. Cherry is my favourite, not least because it smells so good. When I look at wood, I see a lot of similarities with the human body. Its colour is like skin tone, and cherry’s colour reminds me of my own.
I use milk paint, a natural paint bound with casein that was historically used in colonial houses for external and internal walls and furniture. It dries matt and it is not elastic, so it does not feel like acrylic. It looks beautiful when it wears.
My furniture projects take very long to make, from two to four months per piece. When I realised that I needed something quicker and more marketable, yet similar to what I usually do, I launched HoBaan and started experimenting with vessels, centrepieces and other small items.
