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Quite the Puzzle Celebrated Chicago designers debut eco-chic wine tray
Bruce and Stephanie Tharp
Stewardship Council-certified wood. “We do some urban foresting in Chicago and that was our first stop, the one that was most local,” Bruce says. But the methods used to cut the wood would make the pieces less stable and susceptible to warping, so they had to go outside of Chicago. In the end, they chose walnut wood harvested in the Midwest. “We played around with several different eco glues to find the right one and went with a low V.O.C. glue called Eco Glue,” Bruce says. The tray was finished with a simple mineral oil. “If they have an oil in the house to take care of wood, they can take care of it the same way as a cutting board,” Bruce says. “It’s a by-product of petroleum, just a waste product.” The Puzzle tray is just the latest in the impressive Materious design portfolio. The Tharps’ pieces are showcased in galleries around the globe, including at the Art Institute of Chicago where they designed the wreaths worn by the lions guarding the main entrance on Michigan Avenue for the 2011 holiday season.
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hey also have two pieces—the eco-menorah and a bone lamp—in the Museum of Science and Industry’s Smart Home, an eco-friendly home built on the Chicago museum’s campus. Piggy, a philanthropic savings bank, is also available for sale at the Art Institute of Chicago’s museum shop. The Puzzle tray, which debuted in April, is available for $499 at newtonvineyard.com, select boutiques and wine retailers.
-Lauri Harvey Keagle
photography courtesy of KARA LARMIE
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hen the Chicago design duo Bruce and Stephanie Tharp were selected to create a piece for Newton Vineyard’s 2012 Eco-Chic project, the husband and wife pair quickly flew to the Napa Valley winery. “It was just wonderful,” Bruce says. “We spent a couple of days with our 3-year-old and 9-month-old daughters eating grapes off the vine. That was really the start of the inspiration. We had no idea what we were going to do.” Newton Vineyards selected the Tharps’ South Loop design studio to design a luxury tabletop piece celebrating the vineyard’s history and green philosophy to complement the vineyard’s line of unfiltered wines. Bruce says the term eco-chic “is almost an oxymoron” and presented a challenge from a design perspective. “It also had to have functionality,” Stephanie says. “If someone’s not going to use it, it’s not sustainable.” “That’s the leap forward,” Bruce says. “How do you get more functionality out of a tray? It could be a flat board.” The end result was the Puzzle wine tray, a limited-edition rectangular piece featuring a cross-hatched design based on a Chinese motif that mirrors the division of Newton’s vineyard blocks. Each of the puzzle pieces created by the Online cross-hatched design is removable, allowing them to be used For more as coasters or hors d’oeuvres trays. information The terraced edges on the coasters are reminiscent of on Bruce and the terraces in the vineyards, which conserve water and Stephanie retain natural nutrients. A hidden cave in the tray holds a Tharp and corkscrew, paying homage to the Chardonnay cellar built their studio, into the mountain on the vineyard’s property to conserve Materious, energy and keep the wine cool naturally. please visit Both Bruce and Stephanie teach design at the University materious.com. of Illinois at Chicago. Bruce says they teach “the complexities of sustainability to our students,” including the source of the materials and the process used in creating the objects. For the Puzzle tray, the Tharps chose Forestry