Design Guild Mark Holder
Sepal
Name of Designer:
Mark Gabbertas266
2022
Gloster Furniture
The forms of the natural world provide assurance for human beings. Strength, stability, shelter and comfort – all are characteristics we seek in day to day life and all are derived from humble organic origins. It’s no secret we are drawn to water so it’s little surprise aquatic flora invoke a similar attraction and a corresponding sense of calm.
This environmental blueprint influences London based designer Mark Gabbertas’s artful echo of the giant floating lily pad, Victoria Amazonica. Native to Brazilian wetlands, the dramatic circumference and upturned edges of this imposing foliage are so uniform as to appear manufactured. And so, shaped by these strongly geometric yet organic design cues, the Sepal tables deceptively neutral styling adds an increasingly bold statement to any setting when placed alone, paired or arranged in overlapping clusters.
Each table consists of a ceramic top, edged in powder coated aluminium supported by a simple but beautifully detailed, equilateral teak frame. Available in Bianco (white marble effect ceramic top with White powder coated aluminium edge), Nero (black marble effect ceramic top with Meteor powder coated aluminium edge) or Emperor (brown marble effect ceramic top with Java powder coated edge) finishes, this pure palette and simple form ensure versatility. Well suited to pairing with a broad variety of Gloster collections, at 61cm and 87cm in diameter and 41cm high and 31cm in height respectively, the side table and coffee table are designed to overlap when used together in homage to their floral influence.
Mark Gabbertas was born in Yorkshire in 1962 and came to the world of furniture design in a circuitous way having started his working life in advertising before changing career path to train as a cabinet maker. Apprenticed to Codrington Furniture and then with Stemmer and Sharp in the acclaimed Oblique Workshops in Hackney, it was Hackney he chose to found his own design/making studio in 1994. In 2001, he established the Gabbertas Studio in West London to focus on furniture design, before moving the main studio to the Oxfordshire countryside in 2016.