Given the current emphasis on green design, it’s only natural that the tree stump should find its way into home décor and furniture design. Wood stumps have been a recent source of content for DIY bloggers and designers, and have even been co-opted by retail furniture stores like West Elm (in gold, of course). But Stephanie Beamer, co-founder of the all-girl furniture design crew Egg Collective, insists that their designs, including a stump side-table lamp, are rooted in architecture and are more about functionality and form than about following green trends. Citing pre-Danish modernism and French Art Deco styles, Beamer views furniture design “as a microcosm of the whole that is architecture.”
     The Egg Collective girls first met in wood shop while in architecture school in St. Louis. Upon encouragement from a professor, the ladies teamed up to begin creating innovative furniture pieces centered around ideas and creativity, not commerce and mass production. Following a particularly nasty series of storms in St. Louis, the Collective used fallen sycamore trees from local parks to create a series of limited edition side-table lamps that have since generated consistent buzz.