The Caribe Natural Dining Table is a design by Sebastian Herkner, featuring a beautiful wicker webbing. The shape of the table follows our popular Caribe and Caribe Chic pieces, while the beige hue of the natural material gives it a more subtle touch. In Colombia, there’s a long tradition of using the wicker to craft baskets for the arrieros, the coffee pickers, who use them to collect the beans on the plantations in the country’s hinterlands. “For Caribe, we’ve now chosen a natural wicker that has a long tradition in Colombian craftsmanship to create a chair that’s clearly made for indoor spaces”, says Sebastian Herkner. “The wicker lends the design a natural look and makes it very comfortable to sit in
The craftspeople in the ames ateliers use an especially intricate weaving technique for the Caribe Natural pieces. The result is a particularly dense structure that serves as table top. The wicker is made from the branches of the Bejuco, a vine-like plant that grows in the coffee regions of Colombia, and it is traditionally used to make baskets for collecting coffee beans. The plant’s liana-like branches are dried in the sun and prepped for ten days to separate the bark from the inner fibres. These are then woven by hand around the steel frame in a process that takes five days
German designer Sebastian Herkner is a long-term collaborator of ames and has visited Colombia multiple times to experience the country’s cities, nature and people first hand. He also visited many of the ateliers that ames has partnered with to learn about the unique traditional crafts of Colombia's regions. A sought-after contemporary designer and recipient of many industry awards, he has worked with many international design brands, creating intriguing pieces that showcase his intuition for interesting material, colour and texture combinations