Made By Bees
This bee-made vessel by Tomáš Gabzdil Libertiny of Studio Libertiny made its debut at Droog’s booth in Milan and later went on to be the star of the 2008 Paola Antonelli curated exhibition "Design and the Elastic Mind" at the MoMA in New York. The vase was made by 40,000 bees over the course of one week. Studio Libertiny constructed a vase-shaped hive that the bees then colonized, building a hexagonal comb to encompass the existing form.
Beautiful in its ephemeral nature, Libertiny’s “collaboration” with honey bees pushes the boundaries of so-called conventional design by defying mass production and enabling nature to create what would typically be considered a man-made product. Studio Libertiny’s bee vase, like so much other Dutch design, not only tells the story, but does so in an ecologically-derived, natural way that concedes the human manufacturing process to something simpler and more beautiful.
Tomáš Gabzdil Libertiny discussed his work:
"I have been interested in contradicting the current consumer society (which is interested in slick design) by choosing to work with a seemingly very vulnerable and ephemeral material - beeswax. To give a form to this natural product it has occurred more than logical to choose a form of a vase as a cultural artifact. Beeswax comes from flowers and in the form of a vase ends up serving flowers on their last journey.
At this point I asked myself a question: “Can I make this product already at the place where the material originates?” My ambition to push things further led me to alienate the process by which bees make their almost mathematically precise honeycomb structures and direct it to create a fragile and valuable object – like a pearl. This takes time and time creates value."
Made by Bees: Honeycomb Vase #1 (natural) is in the permanent collection of the Cincinnati Art Museum.
Beautiful in its ephemeral nature, Libertiny’s “collaboration” with honey bees pushes the boundaries of so-called conventional design by defying mass production and enabling nature to create what would typically be considered a man-made product. Studio Libertiny’s bee vase, like so much other Dutch design, not only tells the story, but does so in an ecologically-derived, natural way that concedes the human manufacturing process to something simpler and more beautiful.
Tomáš Gabzdil Libertiny discussed his work:
"I have been interested in contradicting the current consumer society (which is interested in slick design) by choosing to work with a seemingly very vulnerable and ephemeral material - beeswax. To give a form to this natural product it has occurred more than logical to choose a form of a vase as a cultural artifact. Beeswax comes from flowers and in the form of a vase ends up serving flowers on their last journey.
At this point I asked myself a question: “Can I make this product already at the place where the material originates?” My ambition to push things further led me to alienate the process by which bees make their almost mathematically precise honeycomb structures and direct it to create a fragile and valuable object – like a pearl. This takes time and time creates value."
Made by Bees: Honeycomb Vase #1 (natural) is in the permanent collection of the Cincinnati Art Museum.
