Arts Thread

The Romance is a furniture collection inspired by a personal family story of traditional crafts. I brought together stories of my great-grandad and great-grandma who were both craftspeople. My great-grandad was making everyday use objects and tools out of metal and wood. My great-grandma was working with textiles and decorative embroidery. I explored how the contrast of these stories could work together in one furniture piece. I invited the softness and coziness of my grandma’s embroidery to rough metal and wood. By combining their crafts I was exploring a new aesthetic and experimenting with traditional artisan techniques of working with metal, wood, and textiles to discover a new ‘generation’ of experimental craft. I treated the objects I designed as the results of the metaphorical „romance” between craftswoman and craftsman. I took the materials out of their usual context and used embroidery patterns as technical drawings, and inspirations for form and function. My grandma's collars, tablecloths, and embroidered scarves became a rocking stool, ruffled chair, light shade, etc. I referred back to the original tactility and softness of embroidery by introducing textile to the detail elements and reversing its decorative function. I used ruffles and bows in a simplistic way to combine the furniture parts.