Rana Beiruti

Departures is a contemporary design collection featuring designers based in Jordan whose works present a departure from the traditional to the contemporary. The collection consists of a series of vessels, balloons, capsules, and bodies that are born from an exploration of the earth’s materials, forms, textures, and tones.

The designers in the collection have used their abilities in crafting material to create lucid and monumental pieces that are at times geometrically balanced, and at other times irregular, ragged, and raw.

Spanning a range of color, form, and texture, the objects capture the craft heritage of the past, while also featuring a playfulness in contours, forms, and asymmetries that speak a contemporary language.

The use of materials such as wool, stone, clay, wood, and folded metals has yielded a collection that is at once primal as well as planetary and other worldly.

With this approach, attention is placed on the sustainability of practices, both in terms of continuing to employ traditional techniques and in emphasizing locally sourced or repurposed materials to create these intimately hand-crafted pieces.

Presented among the rich, pink sands and towering cliffs of the Wadi Rum desert, Departures visualizes a voyage into futuristic forms; a dream of the future that is rooted in the earth.

Jordan’s Wadi Rum desert provides a bold, yet grounded backdrop for the selected pieces. The country’s biodiversity – from lush woodlands to salty seas to arid deserts – is a constant source of inspiration for the makers that it hosts.

With pieces that designers have named Jupiter and Capsule the collection enters an interstellar dimension, albeit situated in this landscape which is very much a reality on planet Earth.

The varied landscape is reflected in the tactile textures and organic forms visible in pieces like the geometric, chiseled patterning on the Hammer & Chisel I Cake Stand by SNC Design Studio; the beautifully repurposed stone wastes in kutleh's Petra Vase; and the contemporary re-interpretation of an age old refrigeration technique in the Jarra ceramic carafe by Twelve Degrees.

From the extensive material research presented in Ishraq Zraikat's hand-felted Melt textiles to the curving body of Opus Design Collective’s boldly hued GEM Coffee Table, the makers featured in this collection evidence the innovative and evolving design scene in Jordan.

In addition to the earthly nature of the collection, there is also a sense of playfulness in pieces like Ahmad Jarrar’s vividly coloured Money Balloon piggy bank; and Far Flung’s expansive and eccentric Gong Mirror; and Andre Mcheileh's Jupiter sculptural coaster set.