Lohmann investigates the contradictions in our relationship to animals using offal, off-cuts of leather, and other meat-industry waste products. The Waltraud Cow-Bench is an appropriately cow-shaped upholstered leather bench, a “bovine memento mori,” the designer has said. As lyrical and polemical as her work is, it is always intended to be useful: Waltraud is as comfortable as one dreams a reclining cow would be.
Gallery label from Rough Cut: Design Takes a Sharp Edge, November 26, 2008–October 12, 2009.