A Novel Piece of Design – Inspired by Dinosaurs

Most people have furniture. There’s nothing especially unique or cool about owning a couch or sofa, no matter how expensive or how well upholstered they are.  However, if you want something truly original for your home you could take inspiration from a young Japanese designer who has created a series of giant foam dinosaur bones.

Sayaka Yamamoto, a graduate of the Hiko Mizuno Jewellery College in Tokyo, now resident in Holland has produced a number of pieces based on the fossilised bones of extinct prehistoric creatures such as Triceratops and Tyrannosaurus rex.

Life-size Foam Dinosaurs

Dinosaurs are a source of fascination for old and young alike.  When mounted in a museum; the huge skeletons of meat-eaters such as the one depicted in the picture above are quite astonishing.  Dinosauria as an Order is arguably the most successful vertebrate mega fauna, there is a beauty and elegance about their anatomical structure.  Ms Yamamoto has used the mounted specimens seen in museums as the basis for an art project, interpreting various parts of the skeletons and creating soft, foam objects designed for interior spaces.

Commenting on the project brief, she stated:

“In daily life, many interior objects are made of animal materials.  In this project I tried to imagine how such products could look if dinosaurs were still alive”.

Interpretation of Triceratops Lower Jaw

Creative sculptures.

The picture depicts a lower jaw of a Triceratops (T. horridus), known as a dentary by scientists.  In reality, the dentary would have a further bone adjacent to it at the front of the animal, the predentary.  This was the beak of the Triceratops, part of a powerful set of jaws that could cut and crush branches several centimetres thick.

When Ms Yamamoto was asked why she had selected dinosaurs for her latest art project, she said:

” I was fascinated by the huge sizes of the dinosaurs, compared to most animals we know and wanted to bring this feeling into our living environment.  Living with Dinosaurs consists of soft-interior-objects in the shape of dinosaur skeletons, made in life-size.  This results in playful objects which can be described as interior toys for adults”.

Go to Ms Yamamoto’s website and view more of her artwork.

Since September 2005, Ms Yamamoto has been resident in Holland and she has recently graduated from the prestigious Man and Identity faculty at the Design Academy in Eindhoven.

Saurischian Hip Bones as a Piece of Art

Sculpting replica dinosaur bones.

The piece in the picture above reminds us of an theropod’s (Tyrannosaurus rex), hip bones.  The bones are depicted upside down, the broad flat section on the bottom would in reality be the ilium, the hole in the centre would be attachment for the femur and the bones sticking out would be the pubis and the ischium which would have pointed towards the tail.

It always fascinates the dinosaur experts at Everything Dinosaur, how prehistoric animals inspire others.  We wish Sayaka every success with her project.