I met Sarah and Ben from The Fortynine Studio around a year ago. We were all talking at a design event as part of Vivid Festival. I was blown away by their presentation of a body of work, The Bushfire, that The Fortynine Studio had just exhibited with The Other Hemisphere over at Milan Design Week, inspired by native flora and the Australian landscape. At the end of the day we naturally gravitated towards each other. Once we started we couldn’t stop talking…. Everyone else had gone home and we were still there chatting about plants. They practically had to kick us out. It was clearly love at first sight!

We exchanged contact details and caught up soon after. It seemed obvious for us to collaborate on a project together – we all share a passion for plants, good design, and creating unusual, beautiful and useful things.

It started over cups of tea and throwing ideas around in both The Fortynine Studios’ workshop and my backyard. We soon realised we share a similar approach – we believe in integrity, in highly resolved design solutions, but also in subversion…. We want to challenge the way people look at and interact with plants and design.

Our aim was to create a completely unique and highly resolved product, celebrating the beauty and whimsy found within the natural world. We wanted to elevate the humble plant pot, and consequently the plant in it, to the place we think it should occupy within our living environments; not as an afterthought but as one of the most important and soulful elements within an indoor or outdoor space.

From my perspective as a landscape designer and mad plant lady, I was really keen to see that whatever we produced was as practical as it was beautiful. Using their strengths in conceptual and object design, The Fortynine Studio wildly explored all kinds of fantastical ideas revolving around plants and pots. Working collaboratively, we each contributed knowledge to ultimately create a simple, considered, and highly resolved product designed for plants, to celebrate plants. It’s like nothing else in existence…. I reckon we nailed it!

About The Pot

The Lazy Season is a hand-made, limited edition, design object. There will be just 49 of the pots made at The Fortynine Studio’s Sydney workshop. We decided to do a limited edition as a way of celebrating small run, local production, focusing on quality design and craftsmanship. Handwritten edition numbers along with The Fortynine Studio and The Planthunter makers marks feature on the wicking floor of each pot.

The Lazy Season is a hemispherical self-watering pot with a bronze prop to enable it to be placed at any angle. As the sun moves through the sky seasonally, the angle of the pot can be adapted so the plant can follow it. Circular coloured areas at the base of the pot reference the changes in the sun’s angle in the sky between summer and winter. The internal water reservoir is separated by a removable wicking floor, meaning there’s no need for a saucer.

The pots are made by hand using local Sydney terracotta clay and feature coloured slip applied to the base. While they’re unglazed they have been fired to 1200 degrees, meaning they are impervious. The wicking floor, made using the same clay as the pots, has been fired to a lower temperature allowing it to draw and retain moisture from the internal water reservoir below, helping to keep your plant happy. The bronze prop was hand carved in wax, molded, then sand cast in Sydney before being hand polished at The Fortynine Studio.

A highly resolved and very beautiful object, the Lazy Season is more than just a plant pot. It can be used indoors and out, placed on an angle or not, and turned like a lazy susan, hence the name. It can even be used as the perfect fruit bowl, paperweight and trivet set (if you happen to kill your plant!).

The Lazy Season is an extremely adaptable and wondrous thing.

The Lazy Season is available online at The Fortynine Studio Online Store, at Small Spaces in Sydney, and at Loose Leaf in Melbourne.

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