Designers turn to cardboard and bamboo to create furniture masterpieces

When Karton Art first launched its gilded grandfather clock, or its Archeo range of bespoke furniture, some eyebrows were raised. One design looked as though a new piece of furniture was poking out of the corners of a packing box, while another appeared to be part traditional chest, part FedEx delivery.

However, the Hungarian design company - comprising the husband-and-wife team of Andras Balogh and Edith Szilvasy - did not make a mistake. Rather, it was further establishing itself as the leading voice in a growing design subculture, pushing a material that until recently has been considered to be forbidden: cardboard.

The use of cardboard has many advantages - high-grade cardboard is recyclable and lightweight, making transport to market and between homes cheap and simple; it is tough but is easily replaced if damaged.

However, acceptance of sophisticated designs in what is still perceived as a "cheap" material has been slow in coming. After all, it was back in the 1950s that legendary designers Charles and Ray Eames were first experimenting with cardboard furniture.

"You can even customise it. You just need a good pair of scissors," Szilvasy says. "Actually, cardboard is a very tactile, even sensual substance, velvety to the touch, and yet there is also something childlike about it - it seems to be a universal experience that we've all built a den from cardboard boxes.

"Despite this, when we launched, people would look at the furniture and say the whole idea was great, but we must be crazy - why would anyone want furniture made out of cardboard? But attitudes are changing."

Certainly Karton Art is not alone in seeing cardboard to be as valid a material as more "noble" options such as metal, stone and glass.

Designers such as Giles Miller and Dries Verbruggen have created pieces using cardboard, while at this year's Salone del Mobile - the leading international fair for the design industry - Russian studio Wishnya showed its Culle line of striking, spiralling lamp shades - also made of cardboard.

Cardboard is hardly the only readily-dismissed material that progressive designers are now considering: Korean designer Eun Myung-soh, for example, has created The Lines, a cabinet with sides comprising multiple coloured elastic bands that mimic the stripped latticework of traditional Korean housing. Brazil's Nolii has produced striking forms for its lampshades by using a water jet to cut a thin sheet of metal which is then bent into shape. And German designer Kristian Knobloch has designed a stool made of plywood pieces held together by a single industrial belt.