Functional Sculptures - Boyd Alternatives

Feature Article

Malmsbury, VIC, Australia

For the last two decades, Deborah Boyd of Boyd Alternatives has created custom designed, hand-made baths in Castlemaine, Victoria. Her designs can be found in the Southern Ocean Lodge on Kangaroo Island and MONA museum in Tasmania, and are a favourite of architects and interior designers alike.

Deborah describes her work as ‘functional sculpture’. Her hand crafted concrete baths are pieces of art, whose presence in any room is both commanding and peaceful. The subtle polished surface, made of a highly dense hand-finished concrete, plays with light and shadow.

The minimalist elliptical shape, based on the natural form of an egg, is organic and tactile. Despite the baths’ artistic credentials, one’s first impulse is to run one’s hands over the surface, feeling the pleasing coolness, smoothness and minuscule imperfections of the concrete form.

One of the unique properties of design is the relationship between form and function, and the harmonious balance achieved between aesthetics and utility. This relationship was keenly present in the first bath Deborah made in collaboration with acclaimed sculptor, Fiona Orr. Between them they wrestled with 350 kilograms of clay, moulding it to the wire armature form in a process more akin to sculpting than product design.

While the nurturing, sculptural form was a conceptual starting point, the needs of the bath as an object with a functional purpose informed the entire process. Deborah and Fiona hopped in and out of the bath as it took shape, testing the comfort and physical experience of the bath they were creating.

The first bath took over three months to complete and today are still a painstaking endeavour, taking up to a week to produce. The baths continue to be hand-made in Melbourne, although the process has moved with the times. Deborah says that advances in 3-D printing technology have been ‘liberating’, opening far greater opportunity for testing new ideas, and new forms of concrete now allow for denser and finer finishes.

Whichever way new technologies continue to change the making process, in each vessel the legacy of the sculptural and intentionally functional original design is clearly felt.

Boyd Alternatives also create bathroom sinks in concrete and bronze, and concrete kitchen benchtops.