Love Birds

‘Amaranth’, by Lars Beller Fjetland and Bottega Ghianda

- Rosa Bertoli

Norwegian designer Lars Beller Fjetland was not entirely convinced when we approached him about contributing to this year’s love-themed Handmade exhibition. ‘You encounter so many love-related clichés while digesting your daily dose of media,’ he says. ‘It is a word many associate with ads for life insurance, fizzy drinks and even cat food, so you can easily argue that it has lost some of its potency and magic.’

Luckily, our floundering courtship righted itself as Fjetland decided to rise to the challenge and began ‘looking for something real and untainted’. While researching wedding rituals, he stumbled upon a pair of ducks, a romantic token given to couples during traditional wedding ceremonies in Korea. Mandarin ducks, Fjetland explains, are believed to mate for life, and to Koreans they represent peace, fidelity and offspring. ‘I felt these ducks evoked feelings of joy, passion and realness,’ he says. The natural world, fauna in particular, has been a recurring element in Fjetland’s work – such as the Turned collection he designed for Hem, a series of stylised bird figurines made with leftover wood. ‘I’ve always been fascinated by animals that live in monogamous lifelong partnership,’ he says. ‘It seems like a man-made construct, but there are several species that live this way.’