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What's better than child slavery? Child slavery for art!
Just kidding. While designer Lucas Maassen employs child labor to create his furniture/artwork, it's completely legal. The best part? Selling the furniture pieces for up to $3,500. Who knew that employing your kids could be so profitable?
Dutch child labor laws let the boys work up to 3 hours a week. So, each Tuesday, instead of watching TV or playing with their toys like all those lazy kids, they schlep into Maassen & Sons and get to work painting dad’s furniture (assorted wooden chairs and cabinets and mirrors) in cheery colors for 1 Euro a pop.
It might sound like a gimmick--a devilishly cute way to sell a few chairs in a crap economy--except that for the Maassen family, the project has served a deeper purpose: It has helped the boys develop an enviable work ethic. “They take the work very seriously,” Maassen tells Co.Design. They even signed employee contracts, which stipulate things like when the work day starts (3 p.m.), how long of a break they’re allowed (15 minutes), and how many vacation days they’re entitled to (12, depending on how long they’ve been employed).
“They love doing it,” Maassen says. “They think it’s great to work in the family business.”
$3,500?! Where are my paint buckets and my kids? Link
Sure, you may not realize it when they’re in battle, but AT-AT’s are actually the ultimate party mobile. That’s why having one as your liquor cabinet makes so much sense.
Dropping a cement filled mannequin on a perforated metal trapezoid is a really strange way of creating a chair, and it looks as you would expect it would-crumpled and uncomfortable. But hey, you can’t blame designer Ezri Tarazi for trying to come up with something new in the world of furniture design. If only he could find a more practical use for a cement-filled mannequin, say as a wrecking ball or to weigh down a snitch when he drops them in the ocean.
Link –via DesignTAXI
Dodd’s Furniture is going where no furniture store has gone before. Where that is, I don’t know. Set your savings for stunning! -via The Daily What Geeks
Model builder msmuse101 and her father threw their skills together and produced this awesome TARDIS dvd shelving unit, which looks so good they should mass produce them and sell them in stores.
The only problem with this TARDIS? It’s way smaller inside than it looks on the outside, like it was made in an alternate reality.
Link –via GeeksAreSexy
The Pin Pres is a storage system that lets a child change the positions of sliding pins to create custom shelving arrangements. My kids could have hours of fun with this. And when no one is looking, I could, too!
Link -via My Modern Met | Design Studio’s Website
Here’s a nifty little gallery of items from Tokyo Design Week 2011, including the glasses shown above, which were made out of sugar crystals which were formed naturally then reproduced in plastic via 3d printer.
Art and innovation collide in these interesting items, and some may even make their way into a store near you. Others, like the tusk inspired headgear or the strange knit yellow suit with duck hat, probably won’t make it out of Japan. Thank your lucky stars!
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Now where did I put that sock? This clever table and chairs and drawers combo furniture called T@tris by Pedro Machado is inspired by a certain madly addictive videogame of the 80s.
What do you do with a spare World War II biplane engine? Make it into a functional art like this coffee table:
Currently on display at Decoratum Gallery in London, the Cylinder Radial Engine Table is made from a US Army Boeing-Stearman PT-13 engine acquired from the Canadian Museum of Flight, Langley, British Columbia. Constructed between 1936 and 1938, the innovative piece features a simple clear glass top so you can see through to the complex engine workings below.
In this case, chocolate isn’t just the name of the color, but the name of the frosting flavor. That’s right, it’s a delicious chocolate-covered couch made by Leandro Erlich.
Nick McBride of Juniata College sent in pictures of some fun his department had with leftover Macintosh computer boxes. They made furniture out of them!
The couch that we put together can hold 2 or 3 people, has built in
cup holders, and would retail for $12,000 (if you purchased the Macs
to make it). We kept all the internal foam pieces to further reinforce
the sitting areas.The easy chair was built the same way.
-Thanks, Nick!
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Wouldn’t it be neat if you took a drawer from each piece of furniture your kid had as they grew up and made one big piece of furniture out of it?
Entwurf-Direkt is a cooperative store in Hamburg, Germany that functions as an art space and workshop all in one. It also serves to educate anyone who would like to do more with the furniture they have, thus doing their bit to help the environment. Their most recent project is the 1,000 Orphan Drawers which takes unused mismatched dresser drawers and outfits them with a new dresser in a unique shape. The design is to help encourage people to reuse what’s available to them in a out-of-the-dresser sort of way. Link -via Craftzine
The latest do-it-yourself project from Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories is this footstool made in the shape of a 555 timer chip. It’s a heavy-duty design, made from plywood, glue, and paint. Link -via Laughing Squid
Flop down on this chair the wrong way and you just might bounce right off. The 336-hour project by artist Preston Moeller required 65,000 rubber bands to create. “It does bounce,” he says. This isn’t the only time Moeller has worked in a rather sproingy medium, though – he has also made furniture out of trampolines.
Link via Laughing Squid
Photo by Jennifer Richey and Jesse Helms
Love typography? In need of some furnishings for your house that are slightly more advanced than that IKEA armchair you shelled out for in college? Look no further than Tabisso’s typographic lounge furniture. It comes in letters A-Z and numbers 0-9, so you can say whatever you want (provided you have the living space, anyway. We don’t recommend, say, “existentialism” for a studio apartment). You can even get coordinating punctuation-shaped lamps to really accent your furniture statement.
Link via the Des Moines Egotist
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IKEA is the world’s largest furniture store. In fact, the company is so big, it is estimated that around 10% of all Europeans alive today were conceived on an IKEA bed. Despite its success though, the company still has quite a few dark secrets, as well as a number of interesting trivia bits. Whether you love the flat-pack manufacturer or hate it, these 10 facts about the company are certain to spark your interest in the things that happen behind the scenes of IKEA.
Image via Calvin Teo [Wikipedia]
The Store Was Created By A Nazi Sympathizer. Founder Ingvar Kamprad founded IKEA in 1943. He was only seventeen at the time. At the same time, he was also directly involved with fund-raising and recruitment for the New Swedish Movement, a pro-fascist, anti-Semitist group that emphasized Swedish Nationalism. When the matter came out in 1994, Kamprad claimed it was the biggest mistake of his life. He apologized for his involvement with the group and wrote a letter to every Jewish employee on his staff to personally apologize for his actions. Even so, the issue caused a minor controversy when IKEA opened its first store in Israel. In the end, the country seemed to forgive him and IKEA is now one of only a handful of companies to have stores in both Israel and other Muslim Middle Eastern countries.
Image via yassan-yukky [Flickr]
Image via DrJohnBullas [Flickr]
Their Catalog Is More Popular Than The Bible. Ok, maybe that’s a little misleading, but every year, there are almost three times more copies of the catalog printed than the bible. They started printing the catalog in 1951 and it has since taken on a life of its own, consuming a full 70% of the companies marketing budget every year and developing a devoted fan base of people who analyze the images looking for obscure books in the bookshelves, Mickey Mouse references and cats hiding in the fake households. There are now 55 editions printed in 27 languages every year.
Image via thekellyscope [Flickr]
Do you like the company or hate it? More to the point, have you changed your opinion after learning about Kamprad’s dirty secrets or about their progressive ads targeted to homosexuals?
Sources: Wikipedia and Mental Floss
Totally different kinda iPod here, folks. just throw this sucker up any old place, and redefine the term “relax”. That’s right, we now have something loungier than a lounge chair. Today, I am proud to be an American.
Hammocks are great and all, but we’ve found something way better. Designers Daniel Pouzet and Fred Frety built cozy hive-like pods out of sturdy DeDon fiber. You can hang from a tree (even over water, if you’re so inclined) or just sit out in your yard — it sure beats a lounge chair.
Link -via Gear Patrol
The chair is excited to see its owner in this Brazilian ad for a furniture design center. As much as I laugh at my dog, I laughed at this even more. -via Laughing Squid
Some people make furnitures out of scraps of wood, but Roman Yerokhin’s family made theirs from really tiny scraps of wood, namely matchsticks:
… since matchsticks were one of the few abundant resources in the USSR, Roman Yerokhin’s family chose it as a medium to give their home a unique makeover. While other people threw away the matchsticks after lighting the stove, they saved them for the sake of art, and even lit up entire boxes of matches when they ran out of materials. Then his mother would glue the matchsticks on small pieces of cardboard to ensure the squares in the pattern were all the same size. Then the pieces were attached to the otherwise bland furniture and covered with a layer of varnish.
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Stacy Conradt found a houseful of jaw-dropping furniture designs for children, from cute and fun to outlandishly opulent. This whimsical wardrobe is from Japanese designer Hiromatsu. See the entire collection at NeatoBambino. Link
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American designer Mattias Pliessnig built this curvy custom bench out of thin sheets of oak:
pliessnig recently completed ‘amada’, a design for a private client who wanted a large bench flowing through his living space. the piece was designed to direct the sitter to face multiple directions. the seating unit is made entirely of air-dried responsibly harvested white oak that has been steam bent to create the curvaceous form of the bench.
Link via Dude Craft | Designer’s Website | Photo: Gene Young/Smithsonian
This Friday’s Museum of Possibilities addresses furniture that can be rotated, upended or turned upside down to reveal a distinctly different function. Over a span of nearly 30 years, this trivial and relatively unimportant design challenge has intrigued me. It is a persistent idée fixe for me. It would be dishonest to suggest that such furniture would be indispensable, useful or necessary for a small home or office. Frankly, it is no more than an intriguing design puzzle.
I have a friend, Dirk Dieter, who lives in a single-family home on a sliver of land not much wider than the grass strip that parallels some sidewalks. His home, a few blocks from the Pacific Ocean south of San Francisco, occupies literally 250 sq. ft. He could use one of these designs, perhaps!
Of course one of the several weaknesses of these ideas is that when one function is in use, the other is unavailable. But I challenge my dear Neatorama readers to think up your own flip-over, multiple-use furniture. It is lots of fun to imagine them!
Here’s something your friends will all remember -propping their tired feet up on an ice cream cookie at your home! This ottoman made of wood, canvas, velvet, and foam is available now from Jellio. Link
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This Friday’s Museum of Possibilities employs several themes that are found in many of my pseudo-inventions: Hiding, duplicity, pretending and concealing. Today’s ideas are offered as solutions to the problem of storing and using exercise equipment in a small home or apartment. Some of these concepts will seem coy and cute, but at the same time odd. Who in their right mind jumps on a trampoline inside a fake China closet in the dark, while listening to headphones? Who would not worry that a fine living room lounge chair that contained a hidden rowing machine might eventually become grimy with sweat?
Yet I can imagine some – though perhaps few – situations in which such concealed exercise equipment might be just what is needed!
Perry Watkins of Buckinghamshire, UK, may have set a world speed record for a piece of furniture when he piloted a Queen Anne dining table with silver service for four people at 130 MPH:
The table, named “Fast Food”, reached a top speed of 130mph and averaged 113.8mph, comfortably eclipsing the 92mph set by a sofa in 2007.
Mr Watkins expects to become the official world record holder for the fastest piece of furniture when his time is accepted by Guinness.
A 1994 Reliant Scimitar Sabre underneath the table, boosted by a nitrous oxide kit, provides the thrust for the makeshift vehicle.
Link via The Presurfer | Photo: REX
I know some people who would rather rebuild something ten time than read the directions! Of course, putting something like a deck chair together is infinitely easier when the directions are written by someone who is fluent in your language. This video is the latest from SheepFilms. -via b3ta
When Nikki of WhiMSy Love had a friend staying over for a short bit, she wanted to make her living area more inviting than just the standard airbed. As you can see, the solution was not only cute and clever, but darn right cheery.
Los Angeles-based sculptor Robert Therrien, among other projects, makes giant versions of ordinary household furniture. In a 2004 interview, in response to a question about his use of scale, Therrien wrote:
The artist’s point of view – from the small world – could be viewed as a large gesture publically. The practice is creating something both large and small.
Publically, Table and Chairs is perceived as a big object, where it actually originated from a small detail-a corner bracket supporting the table leg. Instead of crawling underneath and photographing an actual table in order to see it, why not shrink yourself and take a normal snapshot?
Link via DudeCraft | Interview | Photo: Toxel
I must say I don’t always understand the purpose of certain furniture designs. My best guess is, much like the models who walk down the runway in ridiculous outfits, they are simply meant to serve as inspiration for the more mundane creations they spawn for the regular folk. Regardless, this is an interesting twist… a chair that’s useless by itself, but perfectly designed to integrate (and aesthetically enhance) any gross and uncomfortable chair you have lying around.
Titled the ‘Chair Dress’ by Design Studio Maezm, the actual product in this case cannot even be sat upon without bending too the floor – its soft frame and sofa-style is not sufficient to hold up your weight. However, the chair you place it over as a cover can (hopefully) pick up the extra pounds … and the ‘dressing’ has some basic structural rigidity from its thickness and shape.
Comments Off British custom furniture maker David Fletcher makes capstan tables — tables that expand and contract radially. They’re handy in confined spaces, such as yachts. When the transformation is complete, the surfaces look quite seamless.
