The Wedge, the furniture turned into paper

This piece of paper was once a headboard —but also a cane, a chair, a drawer, even a nightstand. Fragments of furniture, gathered from the ground at the Mercat dels Encants on November 6th, while the waste collection truck roamed the space, sweeping up the remains of the day’s end. This piece of paper was once solid wood —furniture one day, waste the next. Wood from birch, hazel, beech, cherry, pine, oak— reduced to dust, blended with water and cellulose, pressed into a wedge. This piece of paper, now a wedge, was once obsolete furniture set aside so others might take longer to meet the same end.

At the beginning of September, Ma Jose Balcells called me to propose a project. That year, the Association for the Study of Furniture was celebrating its twentieth anniversary and wanted to create a commemorative publication. They needed a designer, and she thought of me.

The piece itself had to reflect the nature of the association, but also serve as a gesture of gratitude to all the members who had supported them over the past two decades.

A couple of weeks later, Ma Jose and Mònica Piera showed up at the studio to talk about the project in more depth. Like diligent students, they came carrying several issues of their own magazine and a DIN A4 sheet listing all the values that represent the association.

The starting point wasn’t complicated: to create a relatively short editorial piece that explored all those values. They saw the publication not only as a token of appreciation, but also as a kind of snapshot of the horizon the AEM wanted to venture toward in the coming years.

Even though they had a very clear proposal, Ma Jose and Mònica were completely open to my response taking a different direction. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard a client say that, but in their case, it felt sincere.

And as they spoke, my mind wandered. They said “publication” and I thought “paper.” They said “furniture” and I thought “wood.” And while I nodded along, a simple but revealing idea suddenly struck me: furniture and editorial publications share the same origin. Both come from trees. That is to say, wood.

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And so, without much filtering, I asked the question that would change everything: Since you’re thinking of a printed format, do you think we could make paper from a piece of furniture?

There was silence. Brief. I don’t know where their thoughts went, but they neither said yes nor no. They responded with a name: Victòria Rabal.

To me, a gift contains more emotion than formality. It connects with something shared between the giver and the receiver. An inside joke. A knowing wink. Once unwrapped, the gift doesn’t answer — it asks. It moves you. It makes you smile. And maybe that’s why I began to wonder: how could AEM express all those values written on that sheet without stating them literally? How could that gift speak about everything without saying it all?

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Thanks to the entire team at the association, to the Molí Paperer de Capellades, to the carpenter and cabinetmaker David Miret Gual, to the Mercat dels Encants, to Gràfiques Copyset, and endless thanks to Ma José and Mònica Piera for their trust, enthusiasm, and willingness to embark on this adventure.

Ingrid Picanyol