People / Anna Larionova
Anna Larionova (1995) is a designer-artist-maker based in Tallinn, Estonia who uses basketmaking techniques and other craft practices to discover new applications for waste materials. She is inspired by ad-hoc solutions by non-designers / amateurism, still-life paintings, and speculative design. She sees craft as a way to combat hyper-consumption and bolster individual and community self-sufficiency. She hopes to recreate the endless moments of accidental assemblage found in everyday life. She embraces crookedness, awkwardness, and failure.
Black Goblet
Jiseung is the traditional Korean practice of weaving mulberry bark paper into watertight objects like shoes and chamberpots and sealing them with lacquer. I’m moved by this transformation of soft substance. Yet the raw material – humble, delicate mulberry bark – is inaccessible to me. But over the holidays, I noticed the mountains of gift tissue thrown away. Aha. The raccoon awakens. And although this paper isn’t ideal for the technique, it is close.
I cut and twist the scraps. Weave them.
As ropes run short, I improvise. Elongate with glue and knots. The result is imperfect. A lumpy topography of hills and frustrated valleys. The size of the goblet is a direct result of how much paper I have. My battle with the ‘wrong’ material results in the goblet’s character. Its history. Its story is thrifty rather than elegant. Reactive and turbulent. The wasteful part of gifts reborn.