Moss Tables

These tables, to me, are a bit bizarre. Although there has previously been living bath mats and carpets made from moss, this is a new design from a home furniture company called Ayodhyatra. The ‘Secret Garden Table’ is a mosaic of a variety of greens and textures from different landscapes all over the world; from Tuscany to the Amazon rainforest. These enchanting micro-landscapes are placed beneath glass to create a tabletop that you won’t be able to pry your eyes from. The moss is dried and not alive so owners of this furniture don’t need to worry about it disappearing when you forget to water it.

I find these coffee tables rather bizarre as it makes me ask the question, “Why do I want a table with moss in it?” but they are very unique and are a hassle free way of bringing the outdoors, indoors. So in a way, these tables are a rather nice way of bringing a touch of greenery into your house in style.

KitKat's Killing Orang-utans

All the over the news recently, it has been reported that one of the nation's favourite chocolaty, break-time treats may have a hidden dark side. The biscuits - KitKat's - are made by Nestle in York and it is said that about 1 billion are sold in the UK every year. However, it came out in the news this week that due to the methods of obtaining certain ingredients for this product, rainforests are being destroyed and in turn many Orang-utans are losing their habitats.

According to animal campaigners, Nestle is buying palm oil, one of the main ingredients in KitKat's, from a company that clears the Indonesian rainforest, forcing Orang-utans out of their natural habitat.

Greenpeace protesters have been out in force and have taken their message to the Nestle's headquarters. They were all dressed in Orang-utan fancy dress costumes, carrying placards with the words "Give me a break" and "Killer" printed in the brand's famous red and white. They have also produced a short advert playing on KitKat's synonymous slogan "Have a break. Have a Kitkat"; Greenpeace have changed the slogan to "Have a break. Give the Orang-utan a break". The video shows an office worker opening a KitKat, then biting into what looks like a chocolate-covered ape finger, which in turn begin oozing blood as he bites into it. This advertisement is extremely smart and powerful, it really does get the message across to it's viewers quickly. I also find it quite hard hitting as the blood and the effects are so realistic looking.

Since this extreme exposure to the Greenpeace campaign Nestle have tried to have the video removed from sites such as YouTube and later released a statement to say that they had replaced the Indonesian company that they were using, Sinar Mas, as their palm oil supplier and "will continue to pressure" suppliers to eliminate sources of oil that contributes to rainforest destruction.

However, this simply goes to show that you just don't know what adverse effects are being caused by the production of such non-necessity items that we humans buy. I have to admit that I am among those 1 billion sales of KitKat's but after watching and reading about this, I have been put off the company Nestle and I feel that although they have changed their ways, it shouldn't have taken a huge display of publicity for them to clean up their act. How did they not know what effects they were causing on rainforests and Orang-utans? Did they know and just didn't care? Are they simply changing their ways to stop their customers from leaving them? Some of these answers I will never know but I can safely say that my estimations and values of such a large brand and company have been extremely lowered.

Black Bear

On Thursday night (28th January) I watched a Natural World documentary entitled 'Bearwalker of the Northwoods' on BBC iPlayer. I put this on thinking it would be simply the story of a biologist gaining black bear's trust using food but this documentary was so so much more. I love watching anything to do with animals and nature, if there's a program on I’m there, totally enthralled in it. However, this documentary meant more to me than any other. It truly hit home and was an intimate, heart wrenching story that had tears welling in my eyes.

The fact that this biologist had worked with black bear's from ever he could remember and had such a relationship with these often feared animals was incredible in itself but the story he told and the following of the bears he worked with, brought you straight into the story and had you feeling every emotion that he was going through. Mother bears leaving their cubs after a year so that they could find a new mate, the rivalry between mother and cubs afterwards because her new cubs were now what she protected, cubs suffering due to disease and mothers having to leave them behind dying - all of these brought emotions that I just couldn't simply believe. Disbelief, shock, enlightenment but most of all pure sadness.

There was one thing though that I could not and I mean could not simply get over - hunting season. The length in season varies between each state in America depending on the black bear population, for some it's an all year round season for others it last 6 weeks. "Black bears can live to a staggering 25 years old but due to hunting most are lucky if they reach the age of 2"; I couldn't believe what I was heaing when this was said. To help protect the bear's being followed in this documentary, the biologist's had wrapped brightly coloured ribbons around their tags so that they would stand out. Posters were even created welcoming the bear hunters, with large fonted messages, asking them to spare any tagged research bears. Sadly, the hunters weren't interested in research or as courteious as the biologist's as many of the bears that I had watched and been following in the program had been killed within the first 2 days of hunting season. Heart wrenching and too sad for words. Not only was this bad enough but soon came the feeling of being appalled. As much as I love animals when it comes to hunting them, under certain circumstances I can understand that it's food for tribes and so on but this, this was just murder in my eyes, a game to these hunters, a trophy kill, a rug for their floor and a head for their wall. To me this is totally unacceptable and just not right! This is simply one thing that I will never condone or understand.

Radiolarian Sofa

This amazing environmental sofa design just makes me wonder what you can't do with cardboard. The sofa and arm chairs shown in this blog have been made entirely from corrugated cardboard by Lazerian Studio. All of the designs for this furniture have been inspired by wasps nests and sea organisms.

 

This Honeycomb range of furniture emerged as part of a collaborative project between furniture designer Liam Hopkins and artist Richard Sweeney at Lazerian studio, Manchester. The design process involved experimenting with columnar forms, which were inspired by structural forms in nature.

Flower 001

When I came across this piece of lighting and was totally intrigued by it. Not only did I find it intriguing and interesting, I thought that the white design to this light was beautiful and simplistic.

I'm keen on anything environmental and to do with nature so discovering that this light revolves around these concepts had me even more excited. As the sun's rhythms influence how a flower opens and closes, the Flower 001 lamp moves its own petals according to the heat generated by the light it produces. The layers are spaced in such a way that the light is evenly distributed and so this movement can be achieved. This amazing design has been created by Christian Kocx.