You could just take a tree stump, bring it in your home and call it a stool or a side table. It would look nice and charming but it wouldn’t really stand out in an extraordinary way. If you want that, you should pick one of these designs. Each one is the result of a rather strange and intriguing project which turns simple tree stumps into works of art.

Kaspar Hamacher is a Belgian designer who uses wooden logs to create unique stools. The method used to get the desired result is rather unusual. The stools are created by setting a log on fire. The burnt away sections shape the log until it finally starts to look like a stool. The bark is also stripped from the log and the result is a clean and artistic form. The project is called Ausgebrannt which means “burnt out” in German.

We’ll remain in the sphere of seating units made of tree stumps and we’ll continue with these beautiful benches and stools that combine wood and metal in a seamless manner. This is a series designed by Hilla Shamia, called Wood Casting. The elements included are made by inserting lengths of tree trunk into a mould and filling the gaps with molten metal.

The Undergrowth Collection is a series composed of side tables and stools made from a combination of wood and resin. The logs used by alcarol to create these pieces are retrieved from the undergrowth of the Italian Dolomite mountains and they are cast in resin together with their bark and native plants. This way their beauty is preserved and immortalized to be admired and appreciated in the future.

Anothervery interesting collection is called Bleu Nature. It puts together acrylic glass and burnt wood trunks to create one-of-a-kind stools and side tables. Each stump is surrounded by a mass of acrylic glass which is then cut, sanded and hand polished in order to obtain a transparent design which captures the beauty of each piece of wood.

The line between art and furniture becomes blurry when designers choose to come up with concepts that use materials in new and unusual ways and which are focused on highlighting their natural beauty. One such case is the collection designed by Marc Englander. It’s a series of furniture pieces with unexpected designs, one of which is a table which has a top that slices a tree stump in two and seems to be embedded into the wood.

Called simply Stump, this quirky stool has a raw and unfinished look that emphasize the natural beauty of the tree trunk each one is made of. Each stool is cut from a green wood tree trunk. As the wood ages and dries, it splits and cracks making each stool unique. The stools are made from ash or maple and they have a smooth finish that lacks stain or paint. They can be customized although that would take away their symbolism.

This is Hug, a cute stool that resembles a tree trunk. It’s handcrafted and it has a colored rope handle which allows the user to easily carry it around while also giving it a playful look. This series is a project by Emo Design and each stool is unique, being made from an irregular and worn piece of wood.

You may have noticed that all these projects focus a lot on allowing the wood to preserve and showcase its natural beauty and that the designers avoided using wood stain or paint. Trift, on the other hand, is a collection created by Judith Seng which turns wooden logs into colorful sculptures. Each block has an ombre design and a size and shape that differs from the others.

Color is also what brings to life these eye-catching lamps designed by Judson Beaumont of Straight Line Design. They’re called Tree Rings and they’re made of wood stumps topped with mirrored plexiglass and with embedded fluorescent lights. They can be used as side tables or as decorations and accent lamps for the garden, porch or terrace.

Similar but at the same time completely different, the lamps created by Duncan Meerding are made from salvaged logs which have deep crevices and cracks. These cracks light up and embrace their imperfections rather than trying to hide them. They’re the perfect accent lights for the garden or yard.