Design studio Playfool has created a set of sustainable crayons made entirely from Japanese wood, which was designed to celebrate the unseen colours within a forest's trees.
Called Forest Crayons, the project is shortlisted for this year's Dezeen Awards in the product design category.
Forest Crayons are made entirely from wood
The coloured crayons are triangular in shape and made entirely from wood salvaged from Japanese lumberyards.
Available in a variety of hues, from cedar and cypress to walnut and oak, the project aims to celebrate the natural pigments found in wood.
The crayons are triangular-shaped
"We started off wanting to develop a way to create with wood like never before," Playfool founders Daniel and Saki Coppen told Dezeen. "After discovering the under-appreciated beauty of wood?s natural hues, we were motivated to achieve our goal by transforming wood into a drawing tool."
Playfool experimented with grinding wood into fine powder
The crayon prototypes were made by finely grinding down raw wood and combining it with natural wax, derived from the Japanese Hazenoki tree. The mixture was then poured into a crayon-shaped silicon mould.
"We were fascinated by how reworking the material into a formless substance allowed us to appreciate it not for its shape or strength but purely for its colour," the studio said.
Various species of trees form the crayons
Playfool sourced the wood from a lumberyard in the forested city of Hida, which is i...