Black furniture

These black stools started a lot for me. They were the first design I started reproducing, and I like them a lot. They are made out of foam, glass fibre, and acrylic resin. The process to make one of these really takes a lot out of me. I’ll explain how I do it. First off, I make a rough shape out of foam. I just cut it by hand, then I start sticking layers of glass fibre and acrylic resin on it. It’s a bit like plaster, but it gets way harder. I put these layers on with a brush, after about 3–4 layers, it gets hard enough to sit on. Then I start sanding the material until it feels nice to touch and paint it.

The whole thing doesn’t sound too bad, but everyone who knows me knows I hate glass fibre. I get super itchy and have to wear a suit and stuff like that. So I always try to make one in a day, it becomes a mental and physical battle to finish it most of the time. On a good day, it takes me roughly 8 or 9 hours of non-stop work to finish one. I can’t always do it, but sometimes I can. There’s a playlist underneath this text block of the music I listen to while making these. Hopefully it completes the image in your head.

I like how everything revolves around the original foam shape. I layer and sand, add and remove, it feels like I’m destroying and restoring the piece at the same time. I believe that’s why the texture is interesting to me. It’s like it comes with a patina out of the box.

Materials: XPS-foam, acrylic resin, glass fibre

Dimensions: ≈ 31x42x42cm

2023

Black table

This table holds pretty much the same story as the stools. I didn’t mention it above, but these objects were made as my graduation project when I was studying furniture design. I felt really proud of it at the time, I showed this table with four stools around it. The response I got was pretty good, but my teachers disliked it massively. I got the worst grades of the whole group and barely graduated.

I remember we were in Liechtenstein on a school trip with that same group and teachers, and we went to check out a museum that was apparently designed by a great architect (can’t remember his or her name). The museum looked cool, but we walked straight past an insane Botero sculpture, like it wasn’t even there. After that moment, I decided not to care too much about what people have to say about my work.