Dutch designer Reinier de Jong presents a new chair named STEEL, surprisingly made of wooden handles. Soil, rain, hands, air, sunlight. Used broom handles show traces of their former use by their patina.
STEEL chair is made from handles of brooms, rakes, shovels etc. The chair gives the wood a third life after it has been taken from its original tree and turned into a tool handle. Another version of the chair is made from new, white handles.
The patina has formed itself around the handle like a new bark, as it were. Colour and texture depend on how and where the tool was used. Craftsmen in the Netherlands work the collected handles to turn them into a folding chair. New, clean wood becomes visible at the places where the wood is cut.
The cut-outs form a natural, concave shape where one gets in contact with the chair: the seat and the back rest. The chair has a simple and modest yet refined shape which reflects the everyday nature of its original components. The STEEL chair is made of different types of wood (ramin, beech, ash), depending on the supply. You can also contribute to this chair. Donate your old wooden handles from brooms, rakes, shovels, flagpoles, banisters etc, as long as they are 28 or 29 mm in diameter.
For each usable metre of old handles, 1 euro will be donated to charity. Or you can donate your handles to have them turned into a chair for yourself. One chair contains approximately 10 metres of handles.
