Polish Design Season: Gdańsk-based design duo Malafor have designed a seat made of a solid piece of oak wrapped in steel.
The stools have a metal handle on one side and are made with a polished stainless steel surface or painted in bright colours.
Malafor presented the project as part of an exhibition called Polska Folk at Tent London during the London Design Festival last week.
Follow all our stories about Polish design this month in our special category. More details about Polish Design Season on Dezeen here.
Here's a little bit of text from Malafor:
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THE TRUNKs
It is a seat made of a piece of oak wood cut crosswise and dressed in stainless steel - either with a shiny, mirror-like, or painting finish. The trunk has a handle, so you can take it whenever you like without making any fuss about it.
materials: oak wood, painting stainless sheet, aluminum stripe, aluminum line
measurements: h 45cm/ diameter 30cm
Thank god there is a handle for the trunks, i could just imagine rolling them about until they fell into the right position. Wait a minute, that sounds more exiting.
Like it… but I’m not sure about the handle though….
Saw these at TentLondon…really nice feel and weight.
Superfluous design
I really like the simplicity of this. However, wood has a tendency to swell and shrink, potentialy leaving a very sharp top edge to sit on. A top ‘lip’ is worth considering?
When they say “solid piece of oak wrapped in steel” i hope it is not the whole thing.
If it is, whats an outrageous use of hard wood!
This is interesting because a similar design was on exhibit in Detroit, Michigan on August 8th, 2009.
http://themidnightbrew.blogspot.com/
We debuted our design August 8th of this year in Detroit, at the opening of our business.
http://stores.disturbedsleep.com/-strse-8/modern-end-table-furniture/Detail.bok
I like this concept very much. Two problems that present themselves when using trunks as seats are bugs in the bark/sapwood and it’s usually a pain to move them around. The bark and sapwood are gone, it looks sweet and has a handy handle.
what a waste of wood! couldn’t you make a thin slice and then have some other hidden support within the steel. Or maybe the steel it’s self is rigid enough to be the structure. Not to mention the weight, must weigh 40 lbs! The aesthetic is nice but not well executed…
What a waste….
Why wrap it in any other material, wood is beautiful in itself!!
About similar design from Detroit:
We ( MALAFOR ) made The Trunks in 2004. You can see photos from the exhibition in 2004, where The Trunks are.
This coloured version is from 2008.
http://www.malafor.com – in “about us” section “exhibitions”.
The Trunk are debuted in 2004 – MALAFOR exhibition in National Museum in Warsaw.
It’s photo from “Inspired by Cologne” exhibition album, from 2005 Imm Cologne Furniture Fairs:
http://www.malafor.com/publikacje_foto/z_789_colo_large.jpg
How thick is this oak wood slice ? – 10 cm only! So it's not a waste of wood!!!!
The weight is 6kg …
From what I could see from playing with it the wood is only about 2-3 inches thick so its not really a waste. Not sure what the remainder is filled with. As i said before the weight is nice…not to heavy and certainly not too light.
Thank You Trevor for nice words!!! bests