His modestly beautiful pieces of furniture breathe the peace of the forest; his playgrounds with their remarkable atmosphere revive wood. All works of the folk-industry artist Tóth Attila prove that function and natural form can be tamed and bound into each other.
“Just as man is incapable of creating anything greater than nature, I am also incapable to shape wood according to my own impulses” – says the carpenter from Pécs. “I do not want more – or less – than unfolding and showing the miracle that lies hidden in the roots of a tree, forgotten in the ground. I am captivated by the sinuous play of roots just as by a trunk with a peculiar shape or a tortuously twisting branch. I would like this natural beauty to live on in my works, filling all those who like to be surrounded by wood”.
Tóth Atilla found various ways to revive wood. His company, GRA-FA PRESS has been offering a widening scale of organic artifacts since 2000. Besides the interior root furniture and a variety of garden and street furniture (benches, tables, porch swings, garden houses, gates, fences, garden grills, bird tables, and information boards) he makes intricately carved articles, playground sets, bus shelters, foot-bridges and other bigger wood constructions.
Most of the stump furniture is juried by the Folk Industry Committee, and all of the public playground sets are certified, they conform to EU standards.
You can see the wood-sculptor’s public woodworks and playgrounds in more than 100 towns in Hungary (amongst them in Szilvásvárad, Visegrád, Veszprém, Szeged, Etyek, Fót, Győr, Csobánka, Tapolca). These products preserve their beauty and function throughout many years, as they are made of durable, hard stump wood.
Tóth Attila mainly uses acacia and oak for his wooden constructions and fruit tree wood for his pieces of stump furniture.