Since 2001 I have been training, studying and learning the craft – carpentry, joinery and cabinet making -also with the help of several local masters. In the few old local workshops of Croatia furniture making is still firmly based on craftsmanship. Therefore my doing in making tables, doors, stairs, roofs is still nowadays handcrafting oriented. Nevertheless, I started soon to use my free time to express my compelling creative side on smaller or larger projects which made me proficient also with many different power tools and technics.
In fact, I like very much technical challenges and projects that require me to learn something new, but also enabling me to challenge myself with ideas and concepts beyond mere functionality or conventional wonderment, though remaining strongly coherent with my inner work ethic and growing intuition.
Make quality artefacts which can last for a long long time is also a strong commitment of my work. Moreover, it is our responsibility to use quality material, enhanced by high technical skill, that can work out the best of the material and results in no (or less) waste of resources too in our nowaday fragile environment. The process of creating a new artifact need a kind of engineering process, which start with a sketch model developing to a prototype (like the ones I will present here) and eventually ending with the finished product. Joinery techniques are demanding proceedings in order to achieve gravity-defying geometries serving nevertheless useful objects. The story of the natural wood which I use is revealed by its texture and defect. Each piece of wood used in my work is appreciated also for the story it tells us and included in the process of the making, without hiding anything. My work is the result of experience and knowledge. In my artefacts I mainly use wood, but I also like to use other supports such as stone and clay. I design and produce furniture and everyday objects, but my true expressive interest actually goes towards the design and creation of more complex artefacts, articulated in combination with architecture and environments.
Most of my previous work has been created in collaboration with my clients and their practical desires and needs, as is the nature of every cabinet maker's work. Only recently have I found my own expressive dimension that gives substance to what is still unfinished but already perfectly shaped in my mind. Therefore my creativity have found a stedier, passionate place in my daily life. My desire in creating my artefacts is also to remind us that to “dance” in life, to flow, to be in the consciousness of a permanent transition from one shape to another, from one emotion to another, from one state of mind to something more elevated and harmonious. This is the secret of a abundance and happy life. There is nothing “square” in life, and we have to learn to flow with ourselves, with our lives and with the space/ambient we are living to appreciate and support the truth within us.
I am currently working on a new design inspired by nature and by the particular and amazing Istrian environment. It is the result of a profound knowledge of the material and of the skills that I have acquired over many years of operation: in this way you can extract the most of the potential of wood, so much so that you almost feel invited to dance with it. But at the same time my artefacts aim to provide elegance, harmony, rhythm, in a space where it is pleasant to stay and live.
