April 12, 2018

Revisiting early 20th century furniture, Dutch style

Filed under: Design by Orangemaster @ 1:33 pm

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Launched by Casper Vissers, former owner of Dutch design brand Moooi, new furniture and lighting brand Revised has recently presented Dutch designer Sjoerd Vroonland’s collection made from traditional materials including solid wood of oak and walnut, stone, glass, steel and marble, all with nice rounded corners and edges.

The collection features influences from the early 20th century as seen by Vissers and his wife, Suzy Vissers, of pieces of furniture photographed in 35 countries at hotels, calling it “The craft you could say British and Italian with a slightly Japanese influence.” Casper Vissers said that Sjoerd Vroonland understood what he was aiming for and instead of just a few pieces, launched an entire collection.

The products are purposely manufactured in factories across Europe, with suppliers based in Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Lithuania. “Perhaps we could get it made cheaper further away, but we have to start driving electric cars, we need to eat less meat and we should not ship from one end of the world to the other,” Vissers explains.

(Link and photo: dezeen.com)

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June 26, 2017

Radioactive items discovered in antique cupboard

Filed under: Animals,Art,History by Orangemaster @ 11:17 am

Cupboard-rijksmuseum

An 18th century collector’s cupboard with mostly apothecary items apparently had 56 hidden drawers at the back of it, with all kinds of objects in them, some of which have turned out to be radioactive.

During the renovations of the museum a few years ago, the cupboard was properly restored and cleaned. After a thorough inspection of all the drawers, experts found some uranium, a common material used for colouring glass back then. Radioactivity was only discovered in the 20th century by Henri Becquerel, although Marie Curie eventually coined the term.

Researchers found almost 2000 different bits of flora in the drawers, including seeds, flowers, roots, animal parts, rocks, minerals and fossils, all used to entertain guests of the unknown original owner. The cupboard is two metres high and was made around 1730 in Amsterdam. It was moved to England soon after and bought back by the Rijksmuseum from an art dealer in 1956.

The curious cupboard is currently on display at the Rijksmuseum.

(Link and photo: nos.nl)

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March 30, 2016

3D printed chair created on a cellular level

Filed under: Design by Orangemaster @ 8:10 pm

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Here’s another super scientific 3D chair by Joris Laarman who created some revolutionary chairs back in 2010 using algorithms.

This aluminum gradient chair on display in New York in 2014 was the second in a series of three chairs that researched microstructures for furniture. According to Laarman, it was designed and directly laser sintered in aluminum, basically creating a lightweight aluminum foam that is engineered on a cellular level to address specific functional needs for different areas in the object. The solid cells in the design create structural strength and rigidity while the more open cells create material reduction and lightness, all within one printing technique.

(Link: www.designboom.com, Photo: www.jorislaarman.com)

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April 16, 2014

Pop-up furniture that folds easily and warms your seat

Filed under: Design by Orangemaster @ 12:07 pm

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Soullmate, a Dutch product by Design Studio BOMM and Sit & Heat, is pop-up furniture for two that can be folded away in seconds and warms your bum if it’s cold outside. They say cold is 0ËšC, but then again they are Dutch and that’s considered cold here.

“The bench, table and pallet together have a dimension of 120 x 120 x 110 cm, which can fold to a height of 35 cm, making the Soullmate easy to transport and store. In a short period of time you can create an event space with a great atmosphere.”

I love how quickly it folds and I encourage you to find out more about the seat warming aspects.

Folding the Soullmate from Sit & Heat on Vimeo.

(Link: phys.org, Photo: screenshot Soullmate)

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March 15, 2014

Marjan van Aubel’s table harvests electricity for mobile devices

Filed under: Design,Gadgets by Branko Collin @ 1:52 pm

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Why not make your table top a solar cell? Add in a couple of USB ports and you’ve got a cell phone charger that you could eat off. And that is exactly what London-based Dutch designer Marjan van Aubel did.

Writes Dezeen:

Inside the glass panels is a dye-synthesised solar cell that uses the properties of colour to create an electrical current, in a similar way to how plants use green chlorophyll to convert sunlight into energy. […] Charging times vary depending on the amount of sunlight present. “One cell needs about eight hours to fully charge a battery, and there are four cells for each USB port,” the designer said.

This reminds me of the bookcase with a memory by Ianus Keller and the table shaped case-mod by Marlies Romberg (story here).

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(Link: Bright; photos: Marjan van Aubel)

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October 29, 2012

Bicycle bags transform into picnic set

Filed under: Bicycles,Design,Food & Drink by Branko Collin @ 11:23 am

The Springtime picnic set has three life stages, as a pair of bicycle ‘bags’ (pupa), as a basket (larva) and as a table and two chairs (imago).

The set was design by Jeriël Bobbe. It is made of wood and contains pockets for tableware. It is currently not for sale, according to Bright.

(Photos: Bloon Design)

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May 23, 2012

Art or vandalism? Jurjen Semeijn turns public objects into furniture

Filed under: Art by Branko Collin @ 9:02 am

Artist Jurjen Semeijn says this about his Street Furniture project:

This is a series of unique pieces of furniture as art created from materials found and appropriated around the city of Amsterdam. On the spot where the materials were found these seemingly worthless road signs, fences and planters were freestyle (yes, without any plans) sawn, drilled, cut, screwed and put together as quickly as possible, turning them into extremely valuable pieces. Eventually they were left for lucky collectors to find.

Each object is accompanied by before and after photos, the time that it took to create the piece, and a list of the tools and machines involved (typically a saw, a measure, a felt pen, a screw driver, some screws, and ‘imagination’). Semeijn calls this type of forging art ‘guerilla upcycling’.

(Via: Trendbeheer. Photo: Jurjen Semeijn)

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November 7, 2011

Mobile restaurant modelled after apple crates

Filed under: Design,Food & Drink by Branko Collin @ 8:42 am

One of this year’s Eindhoven Design Academy’s graduation projects was Ardie van Bommel’s Pure Nature.

The project consists of a group of tables, chairs and kitchen islands that were all made to look like they were made out of apple crates. Van Bommel originally wanted to use actual apple crates, but that approach did not lead to the desired results, Man and Public Space Magazine wrote.

Van Bommel even made, it seems, a diorama of her apple crate restaurant inside—you guessed it—an apple crate. Her website suggests that this restaurant was made for the Philips Fruittuin (a former job creation project initiated by the local electronics giant), although it’s not clear to me whether the set-up has ever been in actual use.

Via the Pop-Up City which has been running a series showcasing “ten great designs spotted at the Design Academy’s graduation show“.

See also: Mirrors that look like holes in the wall and other Eindhoven Design Academy graduation projects.

(Photo: ontwerpstudiobomm.nl)

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October 24, 2011

Piet Hein Eek designs furniture for mail order company

Filed under: Design by Branko Collin @ 12:04 am

The guy behind the scrapwood craze of the nineties, Piet Hein Eek, has collaborated with mail order company Wehkamp on a wooden furniture line.

The line contains three oak tables and two oak chairs, Bright reports. The cheapest item, the chair shown here, costs 200 euro.

Piet Hein Eek is known for exclusive and pricey products, whereas Wehkamp (€ 488 million turnover in 2010) is known as relatively cheap. Eek wanted a change of pace, as did Viktor & Rolf (H&M) and Hella Jongerius (IKEA) before him.

Update 2 November 2017: removed a broken link.

(Photo: Wehkamp)

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August 16, 2011

Museum turns into Roman Empire IKEA

Filed under: Design,History by Branko Collin @ 1:21 pm

Limburgs Museum in Venlo has an exhibit of Roman Empire household goods with a twist. All the items on display are replicas, and are for sale as part of an exhibit that tries to mimic IKEA down to the smallest detail, including the familiar blue floor map in Latin.

Gadling.com writes:

There’s the blue and yellow logo, the shop-by-room concept, and a cheap Roman meatball lunch in the café. Best of all are the exhibit’s housewares, all of them labelled with Latin names and all available for purchase. You can pick up a “Romulus” toy wooden sword, a “Secundus” wine goblet, or a bust of Emperor Hadrian. Furniture available for online ordering include lounges, tables, and storage cabinets modelled after items found in the ancient Roman city of Herculaneum.

The furniture was built by Drias in Tilburg based on charred remains found in Pompeji and Herculaneum, on frescos from those same cities, and on an illustrated coffin from Simpelveld (Limburg).

The exhibit/store runs until 6 January, 2012. The web shop is in Dutch, but also delivers abroad.

(Photo: Limburgs Museum)

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