Oblivion, Incense holder, contemporary italian design
Material: steel and methacrylat

colucci giuseppe design 2003
Art Design Factory product

Oblivion's story

Drawing inspiration from smoke

I’ve burnt a lot of incense in my life. Clouds and clouds of smoke coming from those wands I usually bought at the street markets, most of them smelling the same. Sure, there was plenty of incense going around, but what about the incense stands? I was sick of the usual old chunks of wood.
What’s more, it’s not so much the smell of incense I enjoy as the atmosphere the smoke creates. Every now and then my mind would start wandering and I’d gaze at the smoke. If there were no draughts, it would go up in straight wisps, just like a taut thread. That was and still is what I really love about burning incense. And that’s where I got my idea from, an incense holder that would turn the smoke into a show and not look like a silly old clog.
Obviously, I wasn’t going to use wood. I decided to use steel instead, a nice steel pipe that would collect the smoke. In fact, it would channel the smoke and gather the ash. To make the smoke play look even better, I tried boring holes in the pipe, just like a flute, so the smoke could come out from there. And that’s where it became fun. I realised that by tilting the pipe,
the smoke behaved differently. After a lot of trial and error, and after pondering the laws of physics and smoking myself in the process, I hit on the solution.
With the pipe at a 15 angle, the smoke from the burning incense would funnel up the pipe and spread through each hole, until there were as many as ten wisps of smoke at the same time. With a touch of elegance coming from a rounded methacrylate stand under the steel pipe, the clog-effect was done away with for good!

Colucci Giuseppe