INHERITANCE
2010
Woven rush straw products from Yuanli, a town in central Taiwan, were the area's third most important industry (just behind sugar and rice) in the 1930s. In 1936, Yuanli sold more than 16 million straw hats.
Since then, with the advent of mass production, it has become cheaper and faster to make these products in other parts of Asia, and the hand-woven trade in Taiwan has been in decline. In 2010, I participated in a project with traditional rush straw craftspeople to explore how craft and design can intersect to create new possibilities for this traditional construction method.
The Yuanli weaving industry is known primarily for hats and mats and so, for my exploration, I fused these two iconic images to create a new type of furniture. The result is a giant straw hat that can be a stool, a lounge chair or a carpet that you can sit, recline, or lie on. The giant hat was hand woven by a traditional craftswoman and took almost a month to complete. Inside the hat cavity there is a wood structure that enables the hat to bear weight so that it can be used as stool or back rest. In this way, Inheritance combines the spirit of traditional craftsmanship with the functional requirements of the modern world.
Context
When I first met Mrs Liu, a traditional straw weaver, I noticed that she always sat on the floor to weave and I asked her why. She answered, "You need to use the strength of your whole body, not just your hands, to hold the pieces tight. It's easier to do this on the floor." Then I wondered if she and her family slept on the straw mats that she makes and I was surprised to learn that the answer was no. Her mats are for sale to customers, and not something that her family can afford for themselves. For my project, I decided to create something that both represented their way of life and was also useful.
I started to play with the idea of scale. What would it look like to create a woven hat that was as large as a woven mat? This would both represent the form of one traditionally-crafted object, the hat, while functionally providing a large surface of the other (the mat), in the form of oversized brim on which the Liu family could rest and work.
The crown of the hat is 45 cm, a comfortable height for sitting, and the uneven brim width supports various reclining postures, up to 96 cm, for a person with outstretched legs.
