Luciano Tousco
Bailu Wood
Furniture maker
Gaby, Italy
Recommended by Fondazione Cologni Dei Mestieri D'Arte
Excellence is a wafer-thin table
- Luciano has a passion for experimentation with wood cuts
- His style celebrates the material's organic features, such as curves and knots
- He prefers to build with interlocking joints rather than by using fasteners
Luciano Tousco’s talent for woodworking was clear from a young age, when he spent his time carving small toys. The son of a carpenter, he was encouraged not to follow in his father’s footsteps and choose a more lucrative career initially. His journey into artistic craftsmanship began when he returned to woodworking as an adult, practising it as a side job before turning it into his full-time career. “I started by restoring old furniture,” recalls Luciano. “That is how I learned and refined the ancient woodworking techniques that I still use today, assembling pieces together with interlocking joints rather than using nails, screws or other fasteners.” Luciano's flair for experimentation led him to evolve his practice into producing furniture pieces that place the material in the spotlight.
INTERVIEW
You can build anything from wood, ranging from furniture to tableware. Wood itself is a major source of inspiration to me and the starting point for all of my projects: it is by looking at raw wood that I decide how to design the final object.
As much as I enjoy experimenting, I am generally a minimalist. I avoid decoration for its own sake, which means that details I include in my works have to serve a purpose. If I can, in the finished piece I like to leave the felling cut as it is, as irregular as it may look.
For me, it is succeeding in building a super thin, lightweight table, with a wooden top that is only 1.4 cm thick and a minimalist tripod to support it. Skiing inspired me. I thought to myself that if we can ski at 150 km/h on skis that are just one centimetre thick, what is stopping me from building a wafer-thin table?
I love walnut because it has a lot of personality, but I use it sparingly because it is very dark in colour. As a general rule, I avoid altering the natural colour of wood. Sometimes I can integrate other materials, such as iron or corten, and less frequently resin.
