Wood Tasting

An Aldo Cibic installation at the Slow Wood workshop in Milan is an exploration of wood with all the senses and a way to learn more about the many different woods. #MDW2016

Just across the threshold of this branch of Slow Wood – based in the province of Udine – you are literally overwhelmed by the intense aroma of wood.

Wood Tasting — SlowWood, view of exhibition

It marks the start of a sensorial and artistic route developed for Design Week to enable visitors to savour the beauty of wood with all five senses, as well as illustrating the wealth and variety of woods. It is home to one of the largest and most significant collections of woods in existence – 400 in all. It is a sample collection on display in a room that Marco Parolini, CEO and co-founder of the company with Gianni Cantarutti (who has 30 years’ research in the wood sector behind him) describes as “our main work tool”.

This catalogue of woods is shown to clients, who are accompanied in their choice of the best wood for each project and assisted by a network of more than 30 craft firms. “It’s a mini-paradise where you can explore the large variety of available woods.” says Aldo Cibic, the curator of the installation.

Tasting wood — SlowWood, view of exhibition

“I sincerely believe that many of the designers and architects who work with wood are familiar with just a few of them and we often struggle to access the rarer ones.” The exhibition route is a sort of serial narration, each one “laid out” on a coloured square on the wall. Precious Amoretto blocks are placed beside a quote from the famous book Papillon, set in French Guiana, where this wood comes from; an evocative drawing of a tree with visibly twisted roots, an Indian-ink work by Zeno Filippini, introduces the natural phenomenon of briarwood, while Cantarutti explains his experience on a screen set in an Amaranto wood frame.

Finally, a space filled with boiserie that at Slow Wood they call “Aldo’s still-life” contains an unusual catalogue of objects designed by Cibic in other materials but revisited in different woods, in beautiful natural colours.