Egg Collective to Present 'On Beauty and Goodness' Lecture on March 6

Photo courtesy Egg Collective

Pete and Nora Floor Lamp, polished stainless steel, hand-blown glass.

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Egg Collective will present a lecture at 1 p.m. Monday, March 6, in Ken and Linda Sue Shollmier Hall, Room 250 of Vol Walker Hall, on the University of Arkansas campus, as part of the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design lecture series.

Egg Collective is a New York-based design company established in 2011 by three female designers — Stephanie Beamer, Crystal Ellis and Hillary Petrie. The company creates exquisitely engineered furniture and lighting, pulling from the founders' backgrounds in architecture, art and woodworking. All of the company's work is made in its own wood shop and in collaboration with a community of small-scale fabricators.

Egg Collective's work is united by an underlying attention to detail, surface and form. The company's sculptural work focuses on the combination of natural materials with simple, elemental forms. Believing that objects should grow more beautiful with time, the company chooses materials that will acquire a patina with use. All of Egg Collective's finishes are applied by hand, and its metals are unsealed. Oxygen, water, oils and fingerprints will cause changes in the surface coloration of these "live" metal finishes, making each piece unique over time.

In their lecture, titled "On Beauty and Goodness," the trio will discuss the relationship between beauty and goodness in design. Is it enough for a designed object, or a building, to be beautiful? Or are there additional criteria that should come into play when evaluating a design? Does a design need to consider its social, environmental or cultural impacts to be successful?

These questions were posed to the three founders of Egg Collective early in their education, and they still influence their way of working today. The lecture will be a discussion of the myriad ways designers have historically pushed and explored the terms "beauty" and "goodness," as well as how Egg Collective's founders have wrestled with, and addressed, those ideas as they have grown their company and developed a body of work.

This is the ZweigWhite LLC Leadership in Design Lecture.

The school is pursuing continuing education credits for this lecture through the American Institute of Architects and the American Society of Landscape Architects.

The public is invited to attend this lecture. Admission is free, with limited seating.

For more information, contact 479-575-4704 or fayjones.uark.edu.