About
Adam Markowitz has been operating independent design studio markowtizdesign since 2014. Trained at furniture design and craft schools in Tasmania, Denmark and the USA, he has exhibited in New York, London and across Australia. Alongside fine furniture, Adam is a practicing independent architect and co-runs the experimental ‘Ex-Lab’ design studio at the University of Melbourne. His work aims to find the balance point between contemporary design and traditional skill-based craft.
"Woodworkers are frugal by nature and go to great lengths to reduce wastage – in no small part because of deference to the value of the material at hand, which was once a living thing, and the responsibility that entails. I will be working with scrap pieces from my workshop that are too small to be used for furniture but that I often cannot bear to discard, so they amass in my workshop waiting for the right moment to be used. I will be collecting the chip from the timber I work and supplying to Alicia Aulsebrook from Earth Colour, who will use the woodchip to naturally dye fabric. Our work will be a collaborative piece with the final object/s talking to their shared origin."
— Adam Markowitz 2021
Waste material
I will be working with Native Australian Blackwood, Acacia Melonoxylon. I use this timber on occasion to make my Assegai pendant lights – but these are quite long and I rarely am able to purchase timber in the exact length I need, so often I am left with offcuts that are not long enough to be used. The timber also has particularly high tannin content, making it work well for Alicia’s fabric dyeing.
This piece is in collaboration with Alicia Aulsebrook.