Gravity Black Marquetry Screen

Far-Away Galaxies and Black Holes Inspire Silverlining’s New-Age Craftsmanship

As humans, we have always been fascinated with places out of our reach. At first, that meant new lands, then continents, and now we’re at the peak of our obsession with the cosmos, especially as both the Moon and Mars are seemingly almost at our fingertips.

There are some of the greatest thinkers of our time among our clients. Furniture pieces or art panels that are inspired by the cosmos are very meaningful to them, reflecting on their role and place in the magnificent universe.

'Gravity Black' Marquetry Screen

The illusion of light being sucked into a black hole has been created by designing a pattern of nearly 60,000 arcs filled with gold metallised resin radiating toward a central point. As the pattern gets closer to the event horizon, represented by a polished nickel halo, more of the unusual, figured maple background is revealed intensifying the light area surrounding the black hole. The centre of a black hole is what physicists call the “singularity”.

Here, singularity is depicted with hand-turned spheres floating above a deep sweeping hand-carved texture, symbolising the constantly swirling compression of mass.

To demonstrate the darkness associated with black holes the Silverlining team used the super-black coating known as VBx2 which has a total hemispherical reflection of 1% that challenges the viewers’ perception from any viewing angle.

“Working on projects like this that combine ultra-high-tech materials, traditional and contemporary production methods allow us to challenge perceptions of contemporary furniture. Although the pattern for the artwork was executed digitally using our laser CNC, it had to be first meticulously drawn by hand. In fact, the pattern was so labour intensive, that at one point the whole design team had to work on it together, so that we could complete the artwork in time for our deadline” says Steven Hudson, Silverlining’s senior designer.