Wood Sculptor Stefan Bishop Joins Ralph Pucci International Roster

An almost preternatural ability to spot talent is the Ralph Pucci International proprietor’s claim to fame. New to his showroom’s roster is Stefan Bishop, whose rugged wood furniture and sculptures—photographed here with dancer Lulu Salvaterra—meditate on his childhood in remote rural Oregon. Bishop’s father worked for the U.S. Forest Service, where one of his duties involved felling trees with a chainsaw. That same tool is Bishop’s favorite, employed to carve jagged crevasses into laminated ash or poplar forms that are then charred and ink-stained jet black. A shelving unit with edges softened by the burning process and subsequent hand buffing is part of the miniseries Calescent—meaning “increasing in heat”—so named when Pucci noted its affinity to stacked embers. “Hopefully it has a timeless quality,” the designer says. For the Zoetic series, the moniker a term describing something living or vital, “I wanted pieces to have a kind of aliveness,” he adds. Zoetic includes a coffee table as well as Ash, the sole sculpture, consisting of small wood pieces glued and bolted into a gnarled serpentine. The Ash mirror, meanwhile, is made up of 140 individual wood segments shaped by hand tools.