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Designer, maker and teacher Melanie Abrantes uses cork as her medium.
Looped in by Tina Frey
Hi I’m Melanie, and I’m a designer and maker living in Oakland, California. I make and design cork and wood products for the home. I also have a carving subscription box where I make and send out products every other month, and I also teach workshops. A huge part of my business is teaching people how to work with their hands and create. It’s so satisfying to get something at the end of your project and be like “I made this!”
Originally I actually wanted to do fashion, but essentially I realized fashion was not for me. I like clothes but I don’t like making them, or even designing them, but I really, really love building and creating these smaller kind of objects.
I attended Otis College of Art and Design in L.A. and it was a really hands-on program - we did woodworking, ceramics, metal-working, glass blowing - it was a really great foundation. I just fell in love with woodworking. It really satisfied me and I was really good at it, so I ended up going that route!
Someone that can problem-solve and think outside the box.
It’s cliche but nature. Nature’s such a beautiful, beautiful thing. The most inspiring thing is to see nature just being so gorgeous all by itself, and being able to live here in California - I always feel like it’s such a treat.
My dad is from Portugal, and I would go to Portugal to visit my grandfather and I’d see all these products and stuff made of cork and I’d think oh my god this is so pretty and so cool!
90 percent of cork comes from Portugal. So if you go to Portugal there’s literally cork everywhere. It’s something that is a very huge part of their culture. It’s their number one export. Every time I would go I’d get more curious, because I was doing product design. Portuguese people I think have a very innate sense of design - in Europe in general I think they appreciate design a lot more. It took me a while to get ahold of some cork and then I realized, this material is so fun to work with. Cork is as expensive as wood. It’s a very handmade process because it’s actually the bark of a cork oak tree. It’s sustainable and it’s very protected - you can only harvest them every ten years.
I love material! I’m such a nerd when it comes to understanding material, educating myself and being able to educate other people, because I think there’s something that goes very far just knowing what we use to make something and how it’s made. It brings me so much joy.
My old boss when I was in college, told me once, and I reference it all the time in my mind because I think it flipped a switch on what it meant, but she said there’s no such thing as luck, there’s only being ready for opportunity. Growing up an immigrant family, there aren’t a lot of opportunities unless you take them, and it just switched my brain, like, right, they’re not lucky, they’re in the right space, they worked their way to be in that space and they were ready to say yes to that opportunity, versus that was so lucky of you. No, that person worked hard to be where they were. And they said yes.
Someone found me to write a book about carving. I did not search for that opportunity. At that time I was teaching workshops but I was just doing spoons and stuff. They were like, we really like your aesthetic, we really like your voice, and we want you to write a book if you’re open to it. And I was like “I can do that! I’ll write a book!” Books don’t make money but it’s a great calling card.
I think I’d still be a creative but maybe a Creative Director for photo shoots. That’s one of my favorite things to do is to create the photo shoots I do for my products, and come up with the concept, come up with the idea, the props, find a stylist and a photographer and put it all together. That brings me a lot of joy.
I do enjoy connecting people. I have a large enough platform where if I share someone people might actually see them and learn about them. Another part of that is being a managing member at Join Design - It’s a collective of independent designers and we do trade shows, pop ups and events. But also I can just see how much it’s benefited me to be able to work together with other creatives. I started my business very young and I didn’t know what I was doing so I was going around and asking people how to do it. I contacted Tina Frey when I first started my business and she ended up helping me - she has such an amazing business. I reached out to her and was like ‘Would you be open to answering some of my questions?’ She’s still very much a mentor…I called her the other day about something I’m working on and she was like “You’ve got this Melanie!” And I was like “Yah!” As small businesses, our resources are small, so the more people we know the more we can ask questions.
She is a jewelry designer of gorgeous organically formed sculptural pieces. We met at a panel talk a couple years back but I love how much of a go-getter she is and has so much knowledge. She has been in the craft world for a long time and is killing it!
She is a jewelry designer of gorgeous organically formed sculptural pieces. We met at a panel talk a couple years back but I love how much of a go-getter she is and has so much knowledge. She has been in the craft world for a long time and is killing it!
A good friend of mine who I went to college with. He is the lead designer for Barbie at Mattel, a literal dream?! He is so insanely talented, doing both art and creative writing on the side of his day job. He has been awarded internationally for both and I couldn't be prouder.
A good friend of mine who I went to college with. He is the lead designer for Barbie at Mattel, a literal dream?! He is so insanely talented, doing both art and creative writing on the side of his day job. He has been awarded internationally for both and I couldn't be prouder.
My photographer in the Bay Area, she is a young and multi-purpose creative. She also works as a lead photographer at Airbnb and I am always so impressed with her photography and outreach!
My photographer in the Bay Area, she is a young and multi-purpose creative. She also works as a lead photographer at Airbnb and I am always so impressed with her photography and outreach!
Designer behind the home goods brand Fruitsuper. Sally is one of the most creative people I know, her home and studio literally look like a gallery. She is a huge inspiration to me and is always bringing the design community together to do even more.
Designer behind the home goods brand Fruitsuper. Sally is one of the most creative people I know, her home and studio literally look like a gallery. She is a huge inspiration to me and is always bringing the design community together to do even more.