Reaching up to two and a half metres in height, these cabinets on show at the Collect craft fair in London were created by Ivorian designer Jean Servais Somian to showcase the natural beauty of coconut wood.
Each of the four cupboards was carved from the trunk of a single coconut palm tree, sourced from the Ivory Coast where the trees had been felled to make way for new construction.
Jean Servais Somian exhibited a series of cabinets at Collect
Using a dying craft technique, Somian turned these trunks into characterful furniture pieces reminiscent of human faces and dancing figures, in a bid to find new uses for this traditional material.
"I was lucky to be trained on how to deal with this wood by an elder at the beginning of my career and I wanted to preserve and develop this technique that was specific to tropical and equatorial places," he told Dezeen. Among them are two pieces from his Masque series
"My work is also to educate my fellow coastal people that the wood can be used as a building material," he added. 'There is still so much of it that is used as a burning material, a fuel for cooking."
Although each piece is unique, all are connected by their interrogation of how Western art movements borrowed from traditional African art.
Two of the cabinets ? taken from Somian's Masque series ? are covered almost entirely in wooden spikes or beads, resembling hair around an abstracted human face, much like the nails that sometimes adorn African mask...