Blue Leaf Birds table | Isaac Malakkai

Blue Leaf Birds table with original art by Isaac Malakkai. Two painted panels in an oak frame. Legs of oak and steel pipes

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Blue Leaf Birds

The year is 1976 and Nanna is 7 years old.

She hears her parents talking about moving to Roskilde. She doesn't want to move that far from Greenland. She doesn't want to move from Greenland at all. She has never travelled to Denmark before.

Her parents tell her that vikings lived in Roskilde many centuries ago. It doesn't help convince her, not even one bit. But they moved. Nanna doesn't remember if they moved in 1976 or 1977, but she remembers that her parents bought this table for their first home in Denmark.

Blue leaves sprout out of metal branches at one end of the Blue Leaf Birds table, painted by Malakkai

Blue leaves are carved into the oak legs at one end of the Blue Leaf Birds table, painted by Malakkai

Blue Leaf Birds table close-up of the panels with original art by Isaac Malakkai

Specifications

This table is appropriate as a desk or a dining table.

Size: L 144 x W 73 x H 71.5 cm
Surface treatment: OSMO hard wax oil
Materials: Oak, art by Malakkai, epoxy, steel pipes and love
Imperfections: Handmade art

Leaves have been carved into the wooden legs of the Blue Leaf Birds table

Isaac Malakkai's work in progress, the paintings are still not complete

The leaves on the oak legs glow in the dark with a blue hue

Blue painted rhododendron leaves match up to Malakkai's leaves in the painting

Rhododendron leaf in a mould made of bike tubing

Nele is using a pipette to drip coloured epoxy into the individual holes in each leaf

The original table that is used for the Blue Leaf Birds table

The process

This has really been my favourite table to work on. I was very inspired by the organic feel of Isaac Malakkai's artwork. I had no hesitation in deciding that the leaves should be the theme for the legs and I started experimenting.

I selected leaves from my rhododendron that had to be dried. They were painted the different colours of blue and encapsulated in epoxy. To create the organic feel I used bike tubes as moulds, but the results were just not great, big and clumsy and there was no proper way to attach them to the table. I put that aside and selected the other side to be of wood.

The wooden side is the legs from a different table, that in my opinion suited the organic feel of the paintings. So after a lot of trials, I carved leaves in the wood. To ensure the slight difference in coloration, the depth of the carvings vary so the blue epoxy is darker where the grooves are deeper. If you expose the leaves to enough light, you will find that they glow slightly in the dark.

The small leaves were set aside for the better part of a year. All of a sudden the idea hit me and I found exactly the right mould to create the leaves. A tedious, careful and very time consuming project, each individual leaf has required about 3 hours of work.

The next challenge was mounting. So fragile are the thin petioles that would be attached to the steel fittings, and a small bump would break off the leaf. Think box, here I come again! I strengthened the petioles with a sturdy glue and tried again. Back to the think box. Finally, wearing some silly pink slippers with those small anti-slip rubber bumps, I found my solution. Liquid rubber saved the day. Also, if you expose the leaves to light, you will see that they also glow faintly in the dark.

ISAAC MALAKKAI

Conceived in Barcelona and born in Almería, Malakkai grew up with a pencil in his hand. During 2000 Malakkai discovered a passion for graffiti, and meeting new artists and travelling fueled his passion.

Today he can be found painting murals, participating at international street art festivals or at his Copenhagen studio drawing and painting on paper and canvases. You can find his murals in Almería, Girona, Canary Islands, Nuremberg, Lyon, Naples, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Mexico, Djerba and the list goes on.... The female figure and weird animals, laced with irony and a particular sense of humor, always dominate Malakkai's creations.

Photo credits: Urban Explorer Copenhagen