Design forged from Pinatubo’s ashes
Finally, Shirley Dy has brought her designs home.
It’s been more than three decades since Mt. Pinatubo surprised everyone with its catastrophic eruption after 500 years of lying dormant, dramatically changing the course of people’s lives, the environment, and even global weather patterns. The disaster made such an impact that any volcanic activity since—just recently, Mt. Kanlaon in Negros Island, Taal Volcano in Batangas, and Mt. Lewotobi Laki-Laki in Eastern Indonesia’s Flores Island—brings flashbacks of the destruction that followed.
But as has become an oft-told Filipino tale of resilience, with the devastation came creation.
Looking at the aftermath of the eruption that enveloped their farm in Tarlac, Dy, Destonos co-founder and CEO, thought about making something out of the material that they suddenly had in spades.
Even as nobody believed in her, the entrepreneur who started out as a financial analyst before boldly venturing into design (first fashion, and then furniture) began creating furniture out of volcanic ash and went straight to export. She got her first big break from a French catalog and spent the succeeding years learning from other international designers and producing for name brands all over the world.
“We saw an opportunity not just to create furniture, but to crystallize these lived experiences into lasting, tactile memory,” she said in a statement. “Thirty years after, I’m still here.”
And now, the Filipino market gets a taste of Destonos.
“Timing is everything,” said Dy, explaining to Lifestyle that plans for a homecoming had always been there. But the right product at the wrong time is a wrong product, she added, and as late as two years ago, bringing her designs to the Philippine market was still a no for her.
This time, it’s different. “Now is the time. If I don’t do it now, I will regret it,” she said.
Sculptural furniture
The homegrown international furniture brand creates sculptural furniture pieces that are both bold and quiet, meticulously crafted by artisans who have grown familiar with the unpredictable element for decades. And when they say each piece is unique, they really mean it.
The material borne out of chaos never truly sheds its volatile nature throughout the production process, reacting to its environment and creating truly distinct pieces.
“All of these individual furniture pieces are unique,” said Destonos managing director Douglas Dy, also the founder’s son, as he explained that even when the form is similar, other elements like texture will be different due to the materials’ mutable nature.
“It’s kind of a finicky material to work with. There is a certain balance that has to be maintained at all times,” he said. “As the finish penetrates into the material, sometimes the color changes. The technique that we do to get a certain look at a certain time may not necessarily work the next time around. So the artisan has to adjust.”
Gut feel
He added, “If you don’t pay attention to what you’re doing, by the time you go back and look at it, it’s a different finish. That is the amount of dedication, focus, and attention that goes into making each one of these pieces.”
“It’s always different,” agreed the elder Dy, who designs the pieces. “It really depends how absorbent the stones are.”
When it comes to design, Douglas shared that they go by gut feel, adding that his mother uses the “eight-second rule.”
It should only take eight seconds—or the time a buyer walks through your exhibit at a trade hall—to understand or like a product. “The attention span of people is short. It’s either you get it or you don’t,” said Dy.
“That’s why when my mom asks, ‘Douglas, what do you think about this?’ I immediately tell her my first thought… If there’s something off, we need to fix it,” said Douglas. “The problem with overanalyzing a design is, by the time you’re done with the analysis, what is most true, what is most authentic, is gone.”
