Truth from Wood

New Zealand furniture designer David Trubridge and his lighting fixtures feature in a Time photo essay. Trubridge is the antithesis of those rock-star product designers who turn up at “design art” auctions in New York City or in the front row of Paris fashion shows. In contrast, this rather shaggy 58-year-old is a fixture on the lecture circuit, where he is a passionate advocate for sustainability and responsibility. When it comes to his own work, however, he prefers to let it do the talking. While sculptural seats and other Trubridge creations are an annual attraction at Milan’s Salone Internazionale del Mobile, they begin in a rural wine-growing region that is off the beaten track, even by New Zealand standards; the designer develops his ideas in a garden shed. (It would be an exaggeration to call it a studio.) “I’ve never claimed any of my stuff is art, and I never will,” states Trubridge. “I’ve got years of experience bending, breaking bits of wood, joining them  together,” he says. “You have to be able to make things in reality.”