Caroline Kable’s furniture design resonates deeply with us. Her approach is unlike most: she writes poetry directly onto her pieces as she creates them, etching and engraving words into stone, hammering letters into copper, burning text into wood.
The process is methodical and intuitive. She collects stones from scrap yards and hikes, holding onto them for months until the right poem emerges to accompany them.
Her recent copper table became a week-long meditation in letter stamping, completing sixteen unique poems written directly onto the metal panels after the table was constructed.
Following a severe brain injury in 2022 that left her with altered mental state and shattered clavicle, Caroline discovered that writing became both memory keeper and pathway back to making.
The writing started as a way to process her recovery but naturally found its way into her physical work. As she puts it, poetry and objects tend to develop together rather than separately, creating pieces that hold both function and deeply personal narrative.
Caroline’s technical background spans architecture studies, blacksmithing apprenticeship, and architectural steel fabrication, influences visible in her heavy-handed forms with lighter detailing.
Through her collaboration with Aditya Jaimini on @__e.v.a.m__ , she explores traditional Indian craft techniques that offer a fascinating contrast to her intentionally rough personal work. This demonstrates how her approach to embedding narrative into materials translates across different making traditions and cultural contexts.
Look at all the fine friends I have.
As children do you think that they were taught about suffering? I think, perhaps, it has been harder to be the one holding my hand.
What ho! Another missed dinner? Where have I been? But then, what have they lost? It’s everything on the other side of my coin. I cannot see it but I can feel it be; the void in the air on the other side of the wall, closely I lean my ear and listen to the deep and arduous silence.
Do they ever say my name? I imagine it crosses their lips. No shred of pity, I’ve felt none, thus my Remorse is foul and kept in the garbage can across the street- which is : away, with the reach of its putrid stench the closest it could ever be. To my friends, Thank you.
Photos: @bymichaeldruce
Text written the small box I made on view with @paraphernalia.exhibition
Thank you @jessfugler and @axelsey for putting on a lovely exhibition.
#poetry #art #design #writtenword
Lil lady drying finish in Fall 2024
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#poetry #collectibledesign #furniture #furnituredesign #architecture #interiordesign #cooper #contemporarydesigns #art
