Furniture design, inspired by nature

A love of all things creative drew Chelsea Lemon to the ANU School of Art.

“At school I studied visual arts and design technology and it’s what I was good at, so I decided to pursue it at university,” says Chelsea of her decision to come to ANU.

“Furniture in particular because it has both a design element and a functional element – people use and interact with it.”

Chelsea says that learning a whole new skill set in woodworking was a challenge at first, but she well and truly has the hang of it now.

In her second year in 2013, Chelsea won a competition to design the CASS Student Office and Oasis Lounge, with a cactus-inspired theme.

“This was a definite highlight of my time at ANU so far. It was a great opportunity to get out there in the real world and also something I can add to my CV,” she says

Chelsea’s talent was also recognised in last year’s inaugural DESIGN Canberra Festival, where she won the People’s Choice Award for her work in the Furniture Workshop’s end of year exhibition.

The piece that won was a chair with herbs growing out of the sides and top of the piece (pictured in the gallery below).

“It was pretty exciting, I wasn’t expecting it the award. I had great feedback and it’s always interesting to hear what people have to say about your work.

“When I was designing the chair I was thinking about how today a lot of furniture is thrown out and goes to waste.

“I wanted to create a piece of furniture people could become attached to, and thought that plants would be a good way to do this as they need water and to look after them so they survive.

“Any age group can interact with it because everyone associates vegetables with the environment.”

Her other piece in the show (also below) was inspired by Scandinavian design, made using native Australian black wood.

While she graduated with her Bachelor of Visual Arts in December 2014, Chelsea is doing Honours in furniture in this year so won’t be leaving ANU just yet.

“For my honours year I’m looking at investigating patterns in the environment and in nature, for example in leaves. I’ll then look at translating this to a pattern in furniture, for example through different coloured timbers.”

And beyond that?

“I’m not too sure. It would be nice to set up a business and start some form of professional practice, but I’ll see what happens.”