A Lamp Inspired by the Intersection of Traditional Craftsmanship and Power Tools
By | April 6, 2026 | Student Work -
In October 2025, Champ, a participant from Thailand, joined the Design and Carpentry Station, where he developed a bamboo table lamp prototype exploring how he could combine both traditional and contemporary carpentry tools to create a piece that's beautiful yet functional.
Hi, I’m Thanapon Wongsanguan, but you can call me Champ. I’m from Thailand and I joined the 11-Day Bamboo Build and Design Course in October 2025. As part of the course, I created a table lamp prototype. I was interested in exploring how craftsmanship could meet with power tools or more advanced machinery to manufacture a well designed bamboo product in the future for my personal work.
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When creating the table lamp, I was inspired by the materiality of the bamboo itself. I was also interested in exploring the traditional mutik cutting techniques to finish the edges of joinery. I also wanted to incorporate the nodes of the bamboo into my final piece. This is because the nodes of the bamboo are not only seen as structural component to make the product strong, but also give it a very distinct characteristic that one wouldn’t find with any other materials.
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To create the table lamp, I used poles of Dendrocalamus asper bamboo, but in the future I’d like to test out different species and diameters of bamboo for different results. I created material sections to find the right sizing and pieces of bamboo ones that were not too bendy. Then I cut, assembled, and crafted the edges with mutik (and orbit sander) before I polished the piece.
While I only spent about 1.5 days at the Design and Carpentry station, I learned a lot! I realized that with bamboo, getting hands on is the most important part of the process. This is because sometimes, you have ideas in your head. However, these don’t really translate well into reality you actually make it. I encourage anyone wanting to work with bamboo to try testing it out for yourself to really understand the material.
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