How Polish-Born Designer Marcin Rusak Uses Flowers to Create Stunning Furniture

The fast-rising talent will have a dedicated space within Curio at Design Miami/ with Twenty First Gallery

November 24, 2021

Polish-born Marcin Rusak has dedicated his career to exploring decay and preservation, a line of inquiry that stems from his family’s background in the flower business. His most recent shows include an immersive exhibition of new furnishings, objects, and an Aga Beaupré–directed film at this year’s Milan Design Week as well as a dedicated space within Curio at Design Miami/ with Twenty First Gallery, whom he shows with in New York.

“Since Design Miami/ is equally focused on midcentury and contemporary design, we wanted to merge these two worlds by creating our modern take on the design icon that is the Flora cabinet by Josef Frank,” he says. “The project became a study for us into how the material made with natural flowers and plants can become a piece of furniture that ‘lives’ with its custodian.

Marcin Rusak. Photo: KASIA BIELSKA

“These creations represent an evolution of his nature-based practice, which features flowers embedded into resin slabs, a material he developed that appears throughout his oeuvre. “With most of the work that we do, it is not about the outcome,” he says. “We are interested in the evolution of the ideas and the progress of the materials.” The resulting meticulously crafted cabinets, chairs, and patinated vessels speak to his experimentation with temporal substances. “Sometimes decay is expressed in a Perishable vase; other times, it is a Flora cabinet that ages at its own slow pace.”