Forum Klix.ba

link na clanak sa slikama http://www.mnn.com/your-home/remodeling ... ble-spirit


Manulution: Handcrafted furniture with an unbreakable spirit

After persevering through rough patches of historic proportions, a family-owned handcrafted furniture company based in the klix Bosnian town of Konjic arrives on North American shores with Manulution.


Manulution, a new handcrafted modern home furnishings company, made its big North American debut at the 2011 International Contemporary Furniture Fair. As you can see, it's truly beautiful, heirloom-quality stuff (and admittedly not in everyone's budget). But perhaps just as noteworthy as the pieces themselves, are the company's adversity-filled Balkan roots and remarkable, unwavering focus on sustainability. Let's stop ogling over that credenza and learn a bit more, shall we?

Manulution is the modern offshoot of Rukotvorine (English translation: “handcrafts”), a family-run, furniture company founded in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1927 by Adem Niksic. The company’s early pieces, based around traditional woodcarving techniques originating in the Bosnian town of Konjic, were embraced by the Austro-Hungarian elite and are currently under State protection as part of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s national cultural heritage.

Following WWII and ending not too long ago, Rukotvorine somehow persevered through some formidably tumultuous times: the company survived Yugoslavia’s socialist period as one of only a handful of non-state-owned business in the country; it survived the Bosnian War despite being located in a valley occupied by Croats on one side and Serbs on the other; and it has emerged triumphant from the poverty and strife that’s overwhelmed the Balkan region since the war ended in 1995. Although it may not sound entirely flattering, Rukotvorine is the small business equivalent of a cockroach … resourceful, resilliant, and impossible to extinguish when the odds (in this case a particularly brutal war, political upheaval, poverty) were stacked pretty high against it.
In the past couple of years Rukotvorine has experienced a renaissance across Europe, snatching up design awards including the coveted Interior Innovation Award by the German Design Council and taking on big-deal projects like furnishing the American and British embassies in Sarajevo and working with a number of hotels, bars, and restaurants. And now with the launch of Manulution, the company is after American admirers of lovingly handcrafted furniture where “tradition is effortlessly blended into modernity."

Although Manulution’s American headquarters are based in Washington, D.C. (Adem Niksic’s grandson Ohran is heading up the subsidiary), each distinctive piece is still handcrafted in Konjic using nearly 100 percent locally sourced Bosnian lumber (click here to read more about company’s sustainable forestry initiatives). Ecologically friendly glues, finishes, and other materials are used throughout the process. Additionally, energy-efficiency is a top priority at the Rukotvorine/Manulution production plant:


… we generate 100 percent of our heating energy by burning sawdust and klix wood particles. The same combustion process provides 100 percent of the energy needs for steam wats and dry kilns, wherein we steam and dry our lumber. Finally, air conditioning is not employed to cool our production plant. The same ventilator system that takes the sawdust out creates sufficient air circulation to cool a well-insulated plant, enough to provide a comfortable work environment. Finally, we have started preparations to implement an energy efficiency project, supported by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, to further improve our energy efficiency by optimizing the utilization of electrical equipment to minimize the use of peak load energy, as well as to minimize machine empty running time.


Sums up Ohren: “Our overriding sustainability objectivity is simple: longevity by design, materialization and processing.”
In addition to being words-can't-describe stunning and deeply sustainable, the offerings from Manulution are comprehensive: sofas, beds, coffee tables, cabinets, lamps, dinning chairs and tables, stools, and more. Highlights include the transformative and apartment-friendly Petal Table (pictured at top), the Salih Teskeredzic-designed Wave Cabinet, the Umbra Coffee Table and the Daisy Table (all pictured above). My favorite Manulution piece? The show-stopping Native Sofa with built-in cabinetry. Also available through Manulution are pieces from Artisan, another award-winning sustainable furniture-maker from Bosnia as well as heritage pieces from Rukotvorine.

After making a splash at ICFF, Manulution (a member of the Sustainable Furnishings Council, by the way) has started to sell pieces at retailers such as Mondo Collection in NYC, Haute Living in Chicago, and starting soon, Urban Outfitters’ grown-up sibling, Anthropologie. If you can’t make it to any of those retailers in person, I highly suggest taking a look around the Manulution website to see more gorgeous handcrafted pieces of furniture and to learn more about this deep-green company’s deep-green initiatives and inspiring history. Let me know what you think about both in the comments section.

http://www.mnn.com/your-home/remodeling ... ble-spirit