Hasta La Ideas

Frumpy Chairs, “Poly” and “Mary-Kate” (left to right)

Toronto born and raised, Jamie Wolfond is currently a senior at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, Rhode Island. We first profiled his Extraterrestrial Seating earlier this November and are excited to share his newest endeavor in seating design. A proponent of big messes, loud noises, and hard work, Wolfond epitomizes that in his latest project, which is no exception.

Frumpy Chairs are one-of-a-kind plastic seating, where the experimental process behind each piece results in a series of totally individual chairs, none alike. With Frumpy Chairs, Wolfond brings together the seemingly disparate worlds of ‘hand-crafted’ and ‘plastic-molded’ to create completely unique plastic chairs.

The entire Frumpy Chair Series

The chairs are made from plastic regrind, which are chunks of failed injection-molded parts that would otherwise go to waste. Sourcing the material from factories throughout the country, Wolfond was able to get over 350 pounds of regrind donated for the project.

“Apeman”

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The furniture pieces you see here all look quite old, but in fact, they’re brand new. They’re all made by Furniture from the Barn, a Pennsylvania-based outfit that gets their raw material, as their name implies, from no-longer-used barns.

The family-run business works with a local Amish concern that takes down dilapidated 18th-Century barns in the Pennsylvania and Maryland areas. The raw wood is transported back to Furniture From the Barn’s workshop, where it’s dried over a period of months, cleaned, and turned into rustic furniture pieces. And rather than using commercial finishes, FFTB makes their own paint out of organic materials (pigment, limes, and curdled milk, believe it or not).

Pieces are produced by hand, combining the talents of owner Kelly Lee Kelly, her furniture craftsman father “Pop George” and her master carpenter husband, Michael.

Beyond the satisfaction of recycling otherwise doomed wood and not having to cut down new trees, Furniture From the Barn has a raw material that’s of higher quality. “Old-growth pine was harvested in the 1800s, when it was already 150 to 200 years old,” Kelly told The Washington Examiner. “It’s much harder than today’s pine. The boards are wider, and no pesticides or chemical fertilizers were used in those days.”

Here’s a couple of videos providing a brief look at what they do:

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Originally hailing from Poznan, Poland, where he completed his undergraduate degree at the University of Fine Arts, Marcin Pogorzelski is currently working towards his Masters at Sweden’s renowned Konstfack. His latest projects certainly express a bit of Scandinavian influence, both for their simple elegance and fluent execution.

First up, the belTable is a bit more Home Depot than IKEA (in a good way): Pogorzelski set out to “minimize every part of table and make it even easier to put together after unpacked at home.” It consists of just four parts: the tabletop, legs, pegs and its signature element: a heavy-duty nylon belt.

As you might have guessed, the belTable requires no screws or glue for assembly. The belt also doubles as an ad hoc storage solutions for newspapers and magazines, as illustrated in the images.

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Look at Enzo Mari, popping his chair back; aside from him being a stylish man of action there are a few things we can read in this photo: the first is that the chair is solid, he knows because he’s just nailed it together himself, from plans he drew up and published in 1974. The second is that it undeniably feels good to build something. The third is that this feeling is accessible to all—he’s 80 years old and still doing it. He is one of the great activist designers and in this time of gift giving, when we can do a little activating in our personal circles, isn’t it worth proselytizing with a present that shares the essential joy of our profession? Conceive, Plan, Draw, Collaborate and Replicate!

It is sadly absent from our gift guide this year but happily our neighbors here in Portland at Table of Contents have both the book “Autoprogettazione” which contains the plans for the chair (and much, much more ) AND the cut-but-unassembled kit that Artek brought out a few years ago. Consider the target of your ultimate design gift and choose accordingly: the book is $30 and the kit $310—either of them a bargain for such a tidy, participatory, philosophical dose of design.

Check out the rest of TOC’s highly edited collection here or visit in person—they’re right next door to us!

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Photos by Samuel Lehuede

The harshest criticism that I would level against designer Trust in Design‘s minimalist “Tulp” chair for ZwillinG is that it comes across as a bit cold and sterile. It turns out that this is the point:

The Tulp Chair draws its inspiration from the design of medical furniture used to perform autopsies. It mimics the dual functionality of autopsy equipment, by providing users with both a high chair position and a standard chair position. Embracing a most minimal design approach, the Tulp Chair’s frame is composed of only inox tubing similar to that of austere medical equipment.

Inox, of course, is a French term for stainless steel, and while the material alludes to medical settings, it also happens to make for sleek, durable furniture—in fact, we’ve seen that the alloy can symbolize immortality for its anti-corrosive properties. So too are the clean lines of Joran Briand’s design more suited to a modern loft space than a mortuary.

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