Tales by Trees: A Net Positive Art & Design Startup from Finland
Want to display beautiful art in your home and help the environment at the same time? You’re in luck: Tales by Trees is an innovative art and design company that lets you enjoy the best of both worlds. The company is based in Finland, and their products embody the sleek, spare design sensibility that’s quickly become synonymous with Scandinavia and taken root far beyond its borders.
Tales by Trees is currently crowdsourcing its first two pieces. One of these is the eye-catching “Seed”: a beautifully smooth modern sculpture by award-winning Finnish designers Elina Helenius and Saara Renvall. When creating this three-and-a-half-pound orb, the duo made it a point to only use sustainably grown Nordic birch wood. Each Seed is numbered and stamped, so you know you’re really getting a one-of-a-kind piece of art (as well as a gorgeous item to enjoy and talk to your friends about).
Since Tales by Trees is a “net positive” company, it gives back to the environment by planting 50 trees and protecting about 100 square feet of forest for every Seed purchased. The business follows the principles of the Net Positive Project by putting more into the world than it takes out. “Global consumption is currently almost twice what our planet can provide each year,” the company explains in its mission statement. “This drives climate change and biodiversity loss. We want to change this.”
The company’s designers certainly know how to promote change in a gorgeous way. “We create beautiful and meaningful objects that rebuild the planet, piece by piece,” reads the Tales by Trees website. “Using our innovative net positive model, our products are designed to increase natural resources.” On top of that, the company also guarantees eco-friendly packaging and carbon-neutral delivery to your doorstep.
The other item currently being crowdsourced is a book trilogy: more specifically, the first English print editions of the award-winning Tales by Trees trilogy. “These are three inspirational modern fairy tales that examine our relationship with nature,” the company explains. “These archetypal fables talk about all of us, but from the narrative perspective of trees.”
Among the stories in question is “The Carpenter,” a tale about the emperor’s chief carpenter and a building challenge he is tested with. In “The Knight,” a young warrior prepares to battle the dragon that’s threatening his kingdom. “The Seafarer” tells of a royal prince who wants to sail the seas but lives in a desert land with no trees around to build a ship with.
Iiro Küttner wrote the books (whose English translations were done by Owen F. Witesman), and Ville Tietäväinen provided the spectacular artwork. We weren’t surprised to learn that the trilogy had been named “Finland’s Most Beautiful Book Series” by the Finnish Book Art Committee.
Nature features strongly in the stories, and of course the company ensures that the books were all printed on paper from certified sustainable sources. It also plants 25 trees and protects about 50 square feet of forest for each trilogy sold.
Tales by Trees has already exceeded its crowdsourcing goal, and the company is looking to start delivering its first Seeds and books by June 2018. We’re excited to see what this innovative Finnish design and art team comes up with next.
