South Korean designer Shinkyu Shon created this furniture collection using split pine logs and stainless steel to highlight the differences between traditional Korean and more modern western materials.
The Seoul-based designer developed the Split series as an artistic expression of the changes that took place in Korean culture during the Joseon period.

"We had cherished our own distinctive and gorgeous Korean beauty until the Joseon dynasty," Shon explained, referring to the kingdom that ruled Korea from the 14th to 19th century.
"However, through the period of unstable Japanese colonial rule [between 1910 and 1945], somewhat radical western influences were prevalent and thus, there have been some occasions of a lack of balance in culture."
According to Shon, the isolationist policy adopted by the regent Heungseon Daewongun during the latter part of the 19th century prevented Korea from adopting aspects of western culture.
His furniture project is an attempt to express what he described as the current "misaligned coexistence" of Korean and western ideologies in his home nation.

The objects feature pine logs or blocks that evoke the timber used to build traditional Korean houses called hanoks.
These natural wooden elements contrast with rigidly geometric frames made from standard sheets of mirror-finished stainless steel.

"The reason to contrast and divide the two materials of wood and mirror stainless steel in this work is not to simpl...