Beautiful staircase railing looks like a tree

Energy & Sustainability Furniture & Lighting Science
Beautiful staircase railing looks like a tree
staircase tree railing.jpg

It’s not, unfortunately, actually made of wood. Details are scanty, but I suspect wrought iron. It’s the work of Florida metalsmiths Imagination in Metals. [via Design You Trust]

10 thoughts on “Beautiful staircase railing looks like a tree

  1. pault says:

    Perhaps I’m misled, but it strikes me that using iron for the exact same design is a) safer, b) not killing trees (ok, I don’t have the numbers to really attest to the carbon footprint of ironwork vs. woodwork) and c) will last longer.

    Idk, just a question.

    Either way it’s inspiring.

    1. Sean Michael Ragan says:

      I think you’re right on all counts. An amazing piece of work, regardless of the material. And it would be ridiculously hard to do in wood. It’s just that, when I first saw the photo, I thought for a moment that they had actually trained a live hardwood tree to grow into the right shape for their railing over the course of many years, then cut it down and installed it. Which, you have to admit, would have been spectacularly awesome. Didn’t mean to detract from what these ironsmiths have done, though. It is also spectacularly awesome.

  2. SKR says:

    Unfortunately, that is so not to code.

  3. Spades says:

    Is it only me (because I have a toddler who’s trying to walk) or are the pointy bits (especially the one above the two steps on the bottom) a thing you’d rather not have in a staircase?

  4. Mattyfu! says:

    Maybe it’s in fact made of NERF?

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I am descended from 5,000 generations of tool-using primates. Also, I went to college and stuff. I am a long-time contributor to MAKE magazine and makezine.com. My work has also appeared in ReadyMade, c't – Magazin für Computertechnik, and The Wall Street Journal.

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