Local Places
3D art that celebrates the places we love
Demand for The Furnace’s intricately carved and layered, three-dimensional wooden topographical maps have seen them go from featuring beloved spots around New Zealand to faraway destinations around the globe. Custom requests have meant Wellington artists Aran and Maeve Pudney’s laser cutter has now carved out the irregular coastlines and subterranean seafloors of the Pacific Islands to townships and winding rivers in Europe.
The husband-and-wife team are an industrial designer and structural engineer, respectively, by trade. Four years ago, they bought a laser cutter with the desire of setting up a creative small business that offered them a flexible work/life balance, and worked around their busy lives with three young children.
“After experimenting with the laser to create a number of things, Aran made some layered contour maps and sold them at the local street fair. The response was extremely positive, and that motivated us to develop this concept further,” says Maeve.
Each framed piece is designed and made locally, using eco-friendly materials. And with the variety of geographical destinations and non-uniform nature of the wood, each map is completely unique, with no two the same. The intricate 3D wooden maps, consisting of at least four layers of plywood, are painstakingly layered to represent geographical features such as coasts, islands, channels, mountains and undersea trenches.
Their Local Places range covers areas around New Zealand, from the Cape to the Bluff, and customised maps can be commissioned to include specific places; dates or names added around the map’s windrose; or icons at key locations, such as a family bach or a favourite fishing spot. A new custom ordering system has been added to The Furnace website, so customers can upload the exact image of a desired geographical area, and request the inclusion of special landmarks.
The Furnace has also taken a proactive approach to sustainability right from the beginning, from the water-based, eco-friendly and non-toxic glues and stains to the unbleached tissue paper used to wrap their works of art.
Aran’s desire to create a high-end, quality piece of art with his in-depth knowledge of materials and wood meant he was not interested in using medium density fibrewood or some of the beautiful hardwoods sourced from rainforests.
“After some research, bamboo plywood was the best option,” says Maeve. “It’s strong, has a high rate of growth, its cultivation is chemical and pesticide-free, and the beautiful, pale, minimalist aesthetic melds perfectly with the intricacy and complexity of the lines on the maps. The wood we use is FSC [Forest Stewardship Council] certified, as are the pine frames.”