Waves—whether dynamic like in the sea or static like the rolling hills—they’re surely one of the most beautiful and basic forms found in nature. In the ocean, waves swell, curl and break, rolling onto the beach before falling back into the sea. As they recede, they can leave another kind of wave—patterns in the sand as wave after wave etches a tracery of rivulets returning to the sea.
This one, from the Koekohe beach in New Zealand, inspired me to try capturing the spirit of the waves in various materials. My favorite was wool. Wool is so adaptable, yet natural like the the waves in the sea and sand. But transferring the wavenform to a new material raised an interesting question: how do we know what a wave really looks like in profile? Even when we’re in one, we’re either above it or beneath it, so capturing its profile precisely isn’t easy.
That’s why I turned to a new wave animation software that accurately captures the profile of a wave as it swells, crests and breaks. After prototyping many different shapes, it was the beautiful and basic form of the swell—the same pattern reflected so wonderfully in the Koekohe sand—that won out. The result is the Wave case, a new handmade product from Gone Studio. The Wave case holds cash and cards, even headphones, and because it’s made with zero plastic, zero waste and zero electricity, it’s a natural fit with Nature’s principles—durable, non-toxic, biodegradable and made from renewable resources.
As I developed the Wave case, the wave patterns of the Koekohe coast led me to another wave pattern in between those in the sea and sand. The Koekohe is also home to the Moeraki boulders, the surreal spherical formations that dot portions of the beach. Although round in form, the Moeraki are referred to by the Maori people native to the region as kumara, sweet potatoes. According to Maori legend, the ancient ancestral canoe, the Araiteuru, was part of a fleet that shipwrecked and lost its cargo of kumara. The kumara washed up on the shore and can still be seen today in the form of the Moeraki boulders.
It may be coincidence, but the profile of an ordinary sweet potato is like two mirror-image wave swells cresting at the center. Nature’s waves, it seems, appear over and over across scales and settings. Waves in the ocean . . . waves in the sand . . . and waves in between. The Wave case strives to capture the spirit of the waves, the sand, and even the Maori kumara in its simple, elegant form.
[The Wave case will be available soon from Gone Studio.]