When Pinyen Creative’s creative director Judy Lo found an email from MAISON&OBJET ASIA in her inbox early 2014, she assumed it was just another scam. She gave it a cursory glance, then set it aside.
But when she received another very similar email from the same source a few days later, she took a closer look. It informed her that the Singaporean magazine Surface Asia had recommended a piece she’d designed—the “Tutu Stool”—and that she’d been designated a Rising Asian Talent at the 2014 MAISON&OBJET Paris, a lifestyle and fashion trade show.
Lo is the first Taiwanese designer to have earned that accolade. Commenting on the barrage of interview requests that followed the announcement, she recalls, “It was the first time I’d felt famous.” But her road to international recognition had begun long before. It started when she walked away from a secure job in the tech industry, and included both a failed business and years of shuttling back and forth between Taipei and Nantou.
Lo’s Tutu Stool went on to make an appearance at the 2015 Creative Expo Taiwan, its every material and curve demonstrating her commitment to creating highly designed bamboo handicrafts.
Awakening a passion
A graduate of the industrial design department at Shih Chien University, the 41-year-old Lo was already producing high-quality work during her student years. After completing her degree, she worked as product designer for tech companies such as Philips and MiTAC, where she developed her design talents and won several iF and Red Dot design awards. But then, though seemingly at the pinnacle of her career, she began to feel burned out.
Seeking to reawaken her passion for design, Lo began taking part in culture- and handicraft-oriented design events. Then the National Taiwan Craft Research and Development Institute (NTCRI) introduced a handicrafts and fashion project aimed at stimulating the bamboo craft industry around Nantou County’s Zhushan Township. Launched in 2007, the project sought to foster cooperation between artisans and designers. Lo’s involvement introduced her to a variety of less frequently utilized natural materials.
Lo then decided to develop her own brand. She found an investor and set up Cuckoo in 2010. Unfortunately, she and her investor turned out to have very different ideas about how to run the company. Though Cuckoo shone during its Taiwan Designers’ Week introduction, Lo and her investor were unable to reconcile their differences and ended up shuttering the company.
The shattering of a years-long friendship left her with nothing but her brand and a dearth of confidence. Fortunately, other friends encouraged her to apply to a Ministry of Culture program supporting entrepreneurship. With their support, she resolved to bring Cuckoo back, obtaining NT$500,000 from the program and raising another NT$500,000 herself to make it happen.
Lo originally chose to name her brand “Cuckoo” because working in an office reminded her of a cuckoo popping in and out of a clock at the striking of the hour. Her intention was to apply that kind of lighthearted imagination to the design of everyday products as a way to make them more fun for users while also entertaining herself.
Lo’s participation in NTCRI’s handicrafts and fashion project led her to explore new materials and begin incorporating them into her designs, one of which was an inspired take on bamboo chopsticks that went on to sell very well.
Lo explains that female office workers take great pleasure in sharing lunch with a few good friends, and that such gatherings are often the high point of their workdays. Lo’s idea was to design a set of “dual purpose” chopsticks that would allow working women of limited means to share their meals, and could also be “broken down” into fork-like utensils easy for their non-Chinese friends to use.
Her design gives equal weight to practicality and aesthetics, turning everyday chopsticks into a nice, highly functional gift. “The design lets anyone ‘stick’ it to Taiwan,” jokes Lo.
The Cuckoo brand targets the mass market with casual lifestyle products and has garnered a large following among younger consumers. But Lo is well aware that focusing exclusively on “innovative living design” won’t win her company the kind of international attention she seeks. “You have to offer something uniquely Taiwanese, something deeply distinctive, to stand out from the masses of competitors,” she says. That idea turned her thoughts to Zhushan and its abundance of a distinctively Asian material: bamboo.
Working with local artisans
Lo launched a new venture in 2011: Pinyen Creative. The new company and brand targeted high-end consumers with handmade bamboo products developed in conjunction with Nantou artisans.
She introduced the Ru-Ju Stool, a Pinyen product, at the 2012 London Design Festival. Lo designed the stool in cooperation with craftsman Chen Gao-ming, utilizing a little-known bamboo bending technique. The process allowed them to give the stool a seat shaped like an ancient jade disk, and legs that evoke immortals soaring into the sky.
Other items in Pinyen’s Pin Collection include the Hemera Bamboo Desk Lamp and Hemera Bamboo Lamp, both featuring “random weave” wickerwork.
Lo explains that while many artisans know the technique, few are able to “create a balanced aesthetic from the chaotic weave.”
She therefore turned to Sue Su, an experienced and skilled “random weaver,” for help creating the lamps. Their collaboration resulted in a bamboo lampshade that creates just the sunlight-through-leaves effect that Lo was aiming for, dappling the floor with light and shadow.
Beyond their aesthetic appeal, the products embody Lo’s efforts as a designer to refresh traditions with new ideas and turn clichéd expectations on their head.
Her award winning Tutu Stool was a reimagining of the traditional “bamboo wife,” a sort of bamboo chair-cum-bolster. Lo explains that elderly women in rural areas used to weave “bamboo wives.” Seniors liked sleeping with the bolsters because the open weave of the bamboo allowed air to circulate and kept them cool, with the result that the “wives” were sometimes referred to as “summer air-conditioners.” But with changes to rural lifestyles, the bolsters are now rarely seen in Taiwan.
Lo’s take on the concept involved joining three small “bamboo wives” together vertically to form the legs of a stool, and placing a beech seat on top. After talking it over with Su, she settled on a strong triaxial weave for the legs to provide better weight-bearing capacity. Though the stool weighs only 3.2 kilograms, it is capable of supporting up to 100 kilos. As an added convenience, it also has a removable seat that doubles as a tea caddy.
Idealistic and practical
Having spent two years shuttling back and forth between Taipei and Nantou, Lo has become aware of the limits of bamboo craft design. She says there are a number of designers working with local craftspeople, but the difficulty of making a living in design has made their efforts intermittent and of little use as a stimulus to local industry. “You have to be able to support yourself before you can help out other people,” she explains.
Lo therefore aims to create critically acclaimed products that sell well. You can see her blend of idealism and practicality in everything from the Cuckoo and Pinyen brand strategies to the design of her pieces.
Lo says she owes much to He Peijun, the owner of a bed-and-breakfast called El Patio del Cielo whom she came to know while staying in Nantou. Lo sees He, who renovated an old house and singlehandedly kickstarted Zhushan Township’s creative and cultural industry in 2006, as an indomitable doer.
She admits that when she first went into business for herself, she was still thinking like a designer. She would do things like turn down an invitation to participate in a creative marketplace that could have raised her profile, because it didn’t meet her high standards. He Peijun pointed out that she was acting like “a senior designer with no experience running a business,” and holding onto an attitude that was inappropriate for an entrepreneur.
When the split with her then business partner cost her much of her personal network, the distressed Lo began actively developing her brand outside of traditional distribution channels, and hotels patronized by foreign guests became her best sales platform. Her Ru-Ju and Tutu stools found their way into the Regent and LDC Hotels, enabling visitors to experience their blend of design and local crafts. Many went on to buy them, fulfilling Lo’s vision of marrying the creative and cultural industries with tourism.
Spurring local industry
While Lo is enjoying her current renown, she remains concerned about the friendly and helpful elderly women who took her all over Zhushan introducing her to the ins and outs of the township’s bamboo. “Pushing design to its limits can be very isolating, because you end up doing only those things that make you happy.” Lo therefore makes sure to hire the elderly women of Zhunan and ex-convicts from Tainan’s Guanmiao Township to do her bamboo craftwork. Though the initial volumes haven’t been large, they’ve helped stimulate the local industry.
Lo says she’s worked hard to get to her current position, adding that her five-plus years as an entrepreneur have revealed the differences between liking, loving, and making sacrifices for what you love.
She explains that she used to dream of becoming a singer, and once took on singing duties for her company’s year-end party. But the grind of preparing for the event made her realize that she didn’t have as much passion for singing as she’d thought. Nowadays, Lo is not only capable of making sacrifices for love, but also of creating for love, and hopes that her designs will make other people’s lives better.
“Design is a process of putting yourself in other people’s shoes.” Having identified the heart of design and discovered something special in bamboo-working, Lo is now successfully bringing her unique blend of Taiwanese handicrafts and design to the international marketplace.
Jointly designed by Pinyen Creative and Nantou artisan Sue Su, the beautiful Hemera Bamboo Lamp dapples nearby surfaces with light and shadow, creating a sunlightthrough- leaves effect.
Judy Lo, creative director of the design firm Pinyen Creative, is the talent behind the Cuckoo and Pin Collection brands. (photo by Jimmy Lin)
Judy Lo has collaborated with experienced Nantou artisans Chen Gao-ming and Sue Su to give traditional bamboo crafts a new look. The photo shows Sue Su at work. (photo by Jimmy Lin)
With its warm Hemera Bamboo Desk Lamp, cute Tutu Stool, and ingenious chopsticks-cum-fork, Pinyen Creative has transformed rustic bamboo craftwork into highly designed modern products.
With its warm Hemera Bamboo Desk Lamp, cute Tutu Stool, and ingenious chopsticks-cum-fork, Pinyen Creative has transformed rustic bamboo craftwork into highly designed modern products.
Judy Lo’s exhibitions at Beijing Design Week (left) and MAISON&OBJET Paris (below) have introduced Taiwan’s meticulous bamboo crafts and outstanding design capabilities to a global audience.
Judy Lo’s exhibitions at Beijing Design Week (left) and MAISON&OBJET Paris (below) have introduced Taiwan’s meticulous bamboo crafts and outstanding design capabilities to a global audience.
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