Entertaining

Meet your maker: Indeco

Australian-inspired kitchenware without the kitsch.

By Maggie Scardifield
Indeco Ned's Plats and cheese knife
Australian-inspired kitchenware without the kitsch.
Tasmanian designer Patrick Senior has always been fascinated by timber. "My father was a carpenter, and I always loved watching him make things," he says. Today, Senior crafts his homewares line, Indeco, from the likes of huon pine, native olive, Tasmanian blackwood and salvaged sycamore maple.
From his workshop overlooking the Tamar estuary in northern Tasmania, Senior makes kitchenware such as Ned Kelly-inspired serving boards, pepper mills, toast tongs and simple cheese knives, while watching the changing moods of the river from his lathe. It comes as no surprise, then, that each Indeco piece is calm, considered and inspired by the natural environment.
What's your favourite timber to work with, Patrick?
Huon pine is one of the world's great timbers. It's warm, easily worked, dries extremely well without degrade, and contains a natural oil so it doesn't really need a finish.
Striking grain and timber patterns aren't really the mark of Indeco. Why do you keep it so clean?
I like to keep ornamentation to a minimum, striving for beauty instead through line and proportion. To me this allows the design to shine, being unhindered by a busily patterned timber.
Your Ned's Plats are made from a single piece of timber. How does this affect the boards?
They're all made from a single piece of quarter-sawn timber (that's the orientation of the growth rings; they should be parallel to the edge). This sawing method makes for a finer, more lightweight board, but at the same time one that's still stable and durable.
Indeco, Ned's Plats from $32, cheese knives, $10, (03) 6394 4052, indeco.net.au
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