Lara Bohinc: I was dying to design something really big

The jewellery designer tells us how collaborating with large-scale producers enabled her to branch out.

“Every collaboration brings something new to my knowledge of design,” says Slovenian-born jewellery designer Lara Bohinc. In this exclusive interview she tells us about her most recent collaborations with manufacturers Skultuna and Lapicida, which saw her designing candleholders and a striking table.  

The collaboration between Bohinc and brass producer Skultuna came about when the London-based designer was introduced to the Swedish company through a mutual friend. As Skultuna’s interior products are made entirely from brass and Bohinc works a lot with the material, the collaboration proved to be a matching and fruitful one in designing The London Collection of candleholders.   

Designing jewellery and interior materials are very similar; the time spent designing a ring, a candleholder or even a table is the same, says Bohinc.

The inspiration for Bohinc’s The London Collection came from different forms of travelling. The lines of the Lunar candleholders’ pattern references the highways in Japan, while the Celestial candleholders are inspired by the planets’ motion around the sun and the Feather candleholders portray the wing strokes of birds. “The patterns and graphic shapes of the pieces are the most important part of the collection as they convey visual power,” says Bohinc. The collection makes use of multiple techniques, including photo etching, casting and pressing. 

The Solaris Kinetic Table, designed in collaboration with stone specialist Lapicida, was initiated by Wallpaper magazine as part of its Handmade Project. “As I have been designing jewellery for nearly a decade, I was dying to design something really big,” she says. 

The table draws on a theme that has been prominent in Bohinc’s work for the past few years: the movement of planets and the relationship between the sun and the moon. Four stacked rings of marble move on a rotation spindle and reference planets orbiting around the sun. The table is ever changing as it can take on different configurations, from a compact, closed circle to doubling its size when open. “Designing the Solaris Kinetic Table involved a lot of mechanical work; it was almost like designing a giant clock,” says Bohinc. 

In the future the jewellery designer hopes to delve further into her industrial design background with more large-scale pieces, furniture and interior objects.