PEATLAND Chair

alcarol has recovered rare black oak trunks discovered in a small Alpine peatland, radiocarbon-dated to the 5th century BC. A peatland is a wet, acidic and oxygen-poor environment where layers of plant material accumulate over millennia. Deprived of oxygen, the buried wood undergoes a slow fossilization process: iron salts and minerals react with the tannins, darkening the oak from deep brown to near-black and giving it extraordinary hardness.
Only a few trunks survive this natural transformation, and alcarol carefully selects and cuts them, preserving their eroded edges shaped by time. Transparent cast elements evoke the still waters that protected the material for thousands of years, not to conceal it, but to reveal its story. The section planes remain uncovered so that the hand may touch the warm, ancient vibrancy of the wood.
The Peatland Chair becomes more than a seat—it is a poetic fragment of landscape. The dark oak rises like a relic emerging from earth and water, while its surfaces invite a tactile encounter with history. Solid yet silent, it holds the posture of something that has waited for millennia to return, now shaped into a place of rest: a chair that carries the memory of its origin, where nature, time and presence converge.