Unseen and unsung beauty has long been the lifeblood of VIVID award winning designer-maker Marlo Lyda. Her creative brief to Undersong was to source "sticks, twigs and leaves" to accompany her dining table installation at Design Tasmania's Women in Design Colloquium 2024. As a designer Marlo says she loves "observing the beauty hidden within the world around us; searching for imaginative and intentional ways to work with materials that are already in existence. I call it 'value-adding' and it's a strong ethos of mine."

For this event, Marlo found beauty in Tasmanian Forestry radiata pine plantations. Her reimagined tableware paired with the hanging grace of wild fennel seed heads trimmed with the Swansea foreshore, sticks from the Freycinet forest floor, rushes and reeds from the roadside, and blue gum shoots growing out of gravel on the edge of the Tasman Highway near Bicheno.

There is much to be grateful for in this world; more than we are led to believe; more than we know. And why designers like Marlo Lyda are important. Thank you to Design Tasmania artistic director Michelle Boyd for bringing us all together.