Estúdio Monterraro bets on minimalism with personality and gives a new purpose to the everyday egg
Antonio Garcia and Pâmela Oliveira wanted to provoke the public with the new Monterraro Studio collection — and they succeeded. Through Casca, consumers and design admirers were impressed with the innovative idea of transforming egg waste into design pieces. The duo wanted to use a different and unusual raw material to create the collection. Looking at the plate itself and at the chickens on the family farm, they found in the ordinary, in an egg, what would become extraordinary.
“People perceive works first with curiosity, then with surprise and disbelief. When we say that the pieces are made with egg shells, we hear answers like: ‘That’s a lie!’, ‘But is it really the shell?’ and even very different ones, like ‘I thought it was tapioca!’. That part is always so much fun. Then, when the penny drops, it’s also cool because there’s an instant identification”, explains Pâmela.
This is precisely what makes the public loyal to Monterraro. These are clients who usually arrive through architecture and interior decoration professionals, but are involved with the more sophisticated proposal, full of concept and creativity of the brand, which was born with the idea of being a carpentry shop. “They are looking for products that start conversations, that intrigue, that cause strangeness”, emphasizes the designer.
Antonio Garcia and Pâmela Oliveira, from Estúdio Monterraro
The Shell Collection
Antonio and Pâmela’s newest and most irreverent creation plays with the shapes and names of the egg’s components. The pair of small tables is nicknamed “omelette”, there is a lamp that looks exactly like half a shell, the “gem”. The charming duo of vases is called “fried” and “cooked”.
When they challenged themselves to create something unusual, the idea was to develop a single piece. As they already had a history of creating wooden vases, they thought of making a vase for plants, which soon became two, the first to come out of paper.
“Its shapes were inspired by the gem when it bursts and runs everywhere. We liked the result so much, that we keep creating. The following pieces came naturally, always drinking from the same source”, details Pâmela Oliveira.
According to her, the fastest product to be executed was Luminária Gema, developed after the duo had learned a lot from the development process of the other items in the collection.
Despite its simple features and clean aesthetics, the minimalism developed by Monterraro is far from what has recently become the subject of discussion on social media. Recently, erasing the personality of brands and projects, under the guise of minimalism, has come to be seen as a villain.
In the case of Casca, minimalism is presented in an essential way and without excesses. But it is practically impossible to say that the pieces are simple. Is there more personality than using eggshell as raw material for design objects?
“This collection has the Brazilian identity at its core — and that, in itself, already speaks about its personality. The egg is the most consumed animal protein in the country, but nobody expects to see it in a sculpture or a table lamp. The most interesting thing about Casca is this: she manages to transform something absolutely common into something absolutely unexpected”, defends Pâmela.
sustainable design
Eggs are the animal protein most consumed by Brazilians, but their shells tend to end up in common waste — even though they could have a more sustainable purpose, such as composting, for example. In this way, Monterraro’s partners simply combined hunger with the desire to eat, and created a collection full of creativity and anchored in sustainability, one of the pillars of the studio.
To get so many eggs, they combined their work with that of a company that sells already separated egg whites and yolks to representatives of the food industry in Rio Grande do Sul. The shells that, until then, were discarded, are now reused.
Looking at the environment is not new for creators. In 2022, they developed Resgate, a collection that was produced with recovered wood, which would also become firewood in the state, but ended up as decoration items and gave rise to unique vases full of personality.
breaking the eggs
The process of making the pieces in the Casca collection is laborious and the designers literally put their hands in the dough. After receiving the material, the shells undergo sorting, followed by preparation, cleaning, drying, crushing, until they are added with other components to be molded.
All this ensures that the egg becomes resistant before being integrated into wooden objects. “It’s exhausting, but it’s worth a lot for people’s surprise when they discover that the pieces are made with real eggshells”, emphasizes the designer.
How many eggs can you make a collection?
Check below how many eggshells were used to produce the pieces signed by Monterraro and how much is equivalent to the consumption of food by Brazilians, according to a calculation based on the Annual Report of the Associação Brasileira de Proteína Animal (ABPA), edition 2022, referring to the year 2021:
Omelette side table it is made with 405 egg shells, which is consumed in 575 days by Brazilians;
pair of omelette tables it has 810 peels, which is equivalent to 1150 days of consumption;
fried glass it is made with 165 eggshells, which is equivalent to 234 days of consumption;
Cooked Pot it is made with 240 egg shells, which is equivalent to 341 days of consumption;
Mollet centerpiece it is made with 315 egg shells, which is equivalent to 447 days of consumption.