User:Nzdesign

== David Trubridge (artist, furniture designer) ==

David Trubridge (b. Oxford, UK 1951) is New Zealand’s most internationally known furniture and lighting designer. David’s works draw much international attention and he is highly regarded in both local and international art circles.

Originally trained as a Naval Architect in Britain, upon graduating in 1971 from Newcastle University in Northern England, David chose a lifestyle option of becoming a self-taught rural craftsman, making wooden furniture.

For the next ten years David lived and worked in rural Northumberland where he taught himself furniture-making while working part-time as a forester. During this time David participated in a number of local and national exhibitions in England and Scotland, including the Crafts Council national touring show ‘A Wood Exhibition’ in 1981.

In 1981, David decided to sell everything and embark an open-ended ocean adventure with his family, including son William Trubridge http://www.verticalblue.net which took them through the Caribbean, the Pacific and onto New Zealand. It was during this time that David began to produce furniture inspired by his travels and the people he was meeting.

In this way, a series of objects were born from Maori canoe forms. Light and flexible in structure, these beginnings were a translation of David’s way of looking at nature, of showing his search about essential things, like wood and stone and a way to transmit the simplicity and the fragility of human life.

In 2001 David exhibited his Body Raft in Milan, which was taken up for manufacture by Cappellini,(http://www.cappellini.it). David now spends his time, designing furniture and lighting for his own manufacturing company in New Zealand and other producers worldwide. A prolific designer, David’s furniture and lighting designs garner world wide admiration for their forms and their use of sustainable materials. In 2007 David was the recipient of the 2007 Green Leaf Award from the Natural World Museum for his sculpture Envisioning Change.

David usually designs in wood, developing organic forms on a computer that derive from the patterns of nature, or archetypal ways of building like basket-making and boatbuilding. Extensive travel is combined with exhibiting, teaching, and speaking worldwide.

David continues to be deeply influenced by the wild aspects of nature and is a strong proponent of sustainable design, which he sees as being more about the moral and political issues of lifestyle, than about objects.

External links > David Trubridge website www.davidtrubridge.com > Powerhouse Museum, Sydney. David’s talk at the Smartworks symposium http://www.dhub.org/articles/988 > American Crafts Council – podcast of lecture www.craftcouncil.org > Vitra Design Museum summer workshops http://www.boisbuchet.org/?option=com_archiv2007&task=details&did=55&Itemid=405&lang=