UC27

The teak arrived through an unusual channel — logs seized during a drug trafficking operation by the customs police, and subsequently auctioned off as confiscated assets. Narco-cars, narco-boats, narco-trunks.

For most workshops, raw logs are an inconvenience — not a standard working format, not directly usable in conventional carpentry. For AMBER, a batch of dry, massive teak trunks is a luxury. The wood itself is extraordinary: expensive, dense, with beautiful grain, and almost never worked in raw form in Spain — it arrives here as finished furniture, not as material.

UC27 was the first piece we made from this batch. At the time, we had done very little sculptural work. What we did have was structural construction expertise, the ability to shape timber, and Iñigo's growing confidence as a designer. What we lacked was a clear objective to put it all together.

Then a Madrid-based interior designer gave us one: a table for her showroom, roughly 160×100 cm, mixing wood with ivory-toned stone, with organic sculptural forms. An open brief. As soon as we started working the trunks, it was clear that the velvet surface had to come through. It was too extraordinary to bury.

Two details made that possible: one leg taking a bite out of the stone top, and another emerging up through a circular hole cut clean through it. We burned the teak. Deep, dark, unambiguous.

UC27 remains one of our landmark pieces. Many of the formal ideas we still use today started here.