Nature’s Jewel box by Visionnaire treasures the creations of Steve Leung

Nature has gloriously been the crowning jewel for all of humanity. While one cannot conclude if it healed during the pandemic induced ‘anthropause’, it undeniably continues to be a source of inspiration for omnific creations. For the now concluded Milan Design Week 2022, Italian furniture brand Visionnaire tapped the ingenuity and organicity of nature to create the latest edition of Nature’s jewel box product collection. Donning the designer's hat, Steve Leung created Nature's jewel box 2022 as a poetic dialogue between sculptural art and functional design while embodying the elegance of nature's elements. It is also the product designer’s fifth collaborative year with the Italian brand.

“Nature’s Jewel Box objects honour its timeless beauty and strength through the feature of multiple details hinting at natural elements such as colours, materials, textures, patterns and so on. This result encompasses a very unique design lexicon that integrates my and Visionnaire's creative DNA seamlessly,” states Leung upon the collaboration.

The designer featured the resilience of the trees as the fascinating vantage point for the collection and revolved his designs around the context. As part of the collection, Leung presented an assortment of furniture pieces, including the Asha, Alya chair and Ruth chair, offering a zoomorphic look with the utmost comfort. The Deimos family of sofas and armchairs paired up with the Sarin and Ruben low tables, also festooned the capsule collection.

The Nature’s Jewel box collection was on view during the Fuorisalone in the Visionnaire Design Gallery reflecting the prowess and incredible personality of trees to adapt and flourish in every condition. The collection by Leung is created entirely in ash wood and fosters the interpretation of nature in the comforts of an abode. In an engaging conversation, Steve Leung discusses the thought behind the furniture collection with STIR.

STIR (S): Take us through the conceptualisation of Nature’s Jewel Box collection.

Steve Leung (SL): Since its debut seven years ago, Nature’s Jewel Box design has always paid homage to Visionnaire’s core values of nature’s celebration and holistic sustainability. These values also resonate deeply with my vision of shaping human-oriented and nature-inspired design solutions that enable the betterment of the built landscape.

(S): What was your inspiration for the collection?

(SL): The design of the 2022 chapter of Nature’s Jewel Box explores the beauty of nature from a new perspective: trees’ incredible resilience. Trees have this extraordinary adaptability not only to survive but to actually thrive and grow magnificently amid different weather conditions and even hostile environments. Through the elegant and comfortable objects designed for Nature’s Jewel Box 2022 and their organic shapes, earthy colours and delicate hints of understated luxury, I intend to encourage end-users to re-think the natural environment from a fresh perspective and feel reconnected with nature within the built environment.

(S): How does the collection contribute to an ecologically stable and sustainable future?

(SL): Sustainability has been a key element throughout the entire design process of Nature’s Jewel Box 2022. We applied a holistic and eco-friendly design approach to the design process, from the identification of a suitable design concept aligned with Nature's Jewel Box's main theme, to the carefully selected materials and thoughtful details (organic lines subtly mimicking different shapes of plants).

(S): How does the use of ashwood for the furniture pieces showcase the resilience of the trees?

(SL): Each piece has been deliberately carved in ashwood, which is an especially enduring type of wood known among artisans for its great ability to survive and thrive in particularly adverse climate conditions. At the same time, ash wood also endows Nature’s Jewel Box 2022 collection with a sense of solid sturdiness, yet without compromising the softness and flexibility of its objects. This intentional material choice is also a direct reflection of Visionnaire’s strong sense of environmental protection, yet reveals a subtle continuum between understated luxury and sustainability.

(S): How did you realise the brief shared by Visionnaire?

(SL): With this new chapter of Nature’s Jewel Box, I wanted to achieve a design outcome that could unapologetically embrace Visionnaire’s core values of nature’s celebration and holistic sustainability perfectly epitomised by the brand philosophy of “Green is a new luxury”. Nature’s Jewel Box 2022 collection features a contemporary and neat design language. Organic lines enhance each object by emulating different shapes of plants to evocatively suggest a sophisticated balance between luxury living and nature’s harmony. Every furniture item also encompasses a timeless and highly-versatile design that matches different tastes and styles of interior design, resonating with the brand’s constant quest of experimenting with original creative outputs.

(S): How did Gruppo Giardini’s immersive exhibition compliment your showcase?

(SL): With Gruppo Giardini we imagined the scenography for this collection, selecting one by one the right essences for NJB22. We mainly worked with Ash and Ginko Biloba trees. The collection, which is entirely in ashwood, fosters a new interpretation of nature, in which humans can reconnect with the ecosystem inside their constructed world. Ash trees are also renowned for their ability to survive and grow in particularly difficult climate conditions and for their amazing strength, lightness and flexibility. On the other hand, the Ginko Biloba is originally from China and is an ancient tree whose origins date back to 250 million years ago for this reason it is considered a living fossil. This essence is also renowned for its resilience capabilities.

(S): How did you incorporate the nature-inspired zoomorphic looks into the pieces?

(SL): The overall design lexicon characterising Nature’s Jewel Box 2022 is highly imaginative and suggestive, hinting at a broad spectrum of botanical forms and animalic shapes. I believe a good example could be represented by the exquisite detailing of the tapered legs found in the Asha chair and Ruth armchair. The legs appear as sinuous and flexible joints, subtly recalling signature zoomorphic silhouettes found in the 2015 Nature’s Jewel Box collection: the design intention is to spark a sense of dialogue and evolution throughout the years.