Sculptor and furniture designer Richard Aybar, the creative force behind RA Workshop, masterfully engages with materiality in his evocative creations. Born in New York City in 1983, Aybar explored his passion for romance literature at Wesleyan University before founding his studio in 2019.

We caught up with Aybar to learn about Dock Vase, his work featured in BOND by SIZED in partnership with Dries Van Noten.

Can you tell us a bit about Dock Vase?

I had been working on an urn. The idea of dusty human cremains in a rubbery urn seemed like an appropriate necrogenic handshake. Stacking the urns created in my mind an abstraction of a mausoleum. In this case, the mausoleum will hold cut flowers, a beautifully decadent reminder of our own mortality.

Is polyurethane your preferred medium?

For now.

What inspired your distinctive style?

Rubber, with its myriad of forms and functions, when applied to art and design, assumes distinctly Baroque tropes as a dynamic, decadent, and duplicitous substance.

Rubber’s ubiquitous presence in our daily lives is closely associated with the inorganic world and technological innovations that define our modern era, I strive to explore the possibility of ascribing beauty to this material which is largely under regarded in design.

Are there any new materials or methods you’re hoping to explore in the future?

Other organic detritus.