/ May
2021

The Burnt Cork
collection in Noé’s words

When I moved to Portugal in summer 2017, I decided to drive from France alone. It was a 3 day drive during which I sensed a change in my life and the beginning of a new chapter. This road-trip was open to feeling, seeking and finding, eloquently narrated by landscape.  Upon entering the country, I was met by flames, burnt forests and charred black trees. It was a shock to drive into these hills ablaze, the inferno consuming the landscape and leaving behind a world of visible entropy. Hauntingly dark, each spike of burnt wood sticking from the ground where a tree used to be. The power of fire struck me, one of the five elements vital to existence on earth, a keystone to the development of culture. It is a transformer of environments: subtle when controlled and aggressive when wild.  Fire is somehow always beautiful.  Part of me didn’t want to think about this, but I took photos and this experience stayed with me. It made me question my interaction with nature as a designer and as a consumer. I felt it would resurface in the work I was to do here in Portugal.