Contemporary Design 
18 September 2024
Contemporary Design 
156

Tomáš Libertíny

Paper bowl

Studio Libertíny
Slovakia, 2007
paper, wood glue 4½ h × 9¾ dia in (11 × 25 cm)
estimate: $3,000–5,000
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Impressed date, number, inscription and studio mark to copper plate to underside ‘Studio Libertíny Edition 1/3 Design Miami 2007’. This example is number 1 from the edition of 3.
provenance: Acquired directly from the artist, Collection of Murray Moss and Franklin Getchell

This work will ship from Lambertville, New Jersey.

print

This extraordinary object is by Tomáš Libertíny, the artist whose early work...resulted in a series of unearthly honeycomb vases actually made by bees. Libertíny, who was working live, had set up a small workshop at Design Miami, 2007. He was offering this bowl in an edition of three; I purchased the first. To me, this object is a metaphor—like the paper sheets it laminates, it fuses technology with domestic and decorative function. The “production process” involved laminating hundreds of sheets of paper into a solid block and then, using a lathe, carving the block of paper into the shape he desired, as if it were wood. Furthermore, a faint trace of an image of a tree appears on the bowl—the result of the fact that each sheet of paper used to make the “block” was first printed with an identical image of a tree.

—Murray Moss

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