Manapan were invited to be involved in the manufacture of the high end furnishings for the Melbourne Airport executive offices.  We teamed up with Foolscap Studio, a Melbourne based design company to create some beautiful furniture.  

We worked closely with Foolscap through the design phase introducing to them different techniques and finishes for the furniture unique to Arnhem Land.  The build was carried out at our Milingimbi workshop as well as in Melbourne at Ramvek a commercial joinery company.

“Many Indigenous artworks are depicted from an aerial perspective. Our starting
point with this process was to map both the Melbourne Airport runways and the airstrips on
Milingimbi Island, near where the pieces were made. We looked at the convergence of the
numerous runways, and transferred this as a criss-cross motif onto the edge of the table.” 

– Adèle Winteridge, Founding Director, Foolscap Studio. 

Monolithic, shield-shaped legs were hollowed out to conceal cable management, before being hand-chiselled and stained dark for dramatic, tactile contrast. These handcrafted motifs and techniques have been repeated across the CEO’s private meeting table and personal workstation, as well as two credenza units topped with locally-quarried Dreamtime marble.  

“The result is a truly bespoke family of furniture. The table in particular speaks
of much more than something as practical as a table would typically be expected
to be. It’s a piece of furniture that speaks to the history of its makers, as well
as its own making as an object.” 

– Rob Harper, Foolscap Studio. 

Our team travelled to Melbourne to work alongside the Ramvek team to learn from their highly skilled tradesmen on the areas of the build requiring CNC machining. 

The results are spectacular.

UPDATE: The main ‘Gulnura’ table that was constructed as a part of this project
won a major design award from The Designers Institute of New Zealand.