Milan 09: French designers Ibride presented a writing desk in the form of a life-sized mule at Zona Tortona in Milan last month.

The desk is made of high-pressure laminate, can accommodate a flat-screen computer, and is equipped with lighting and internet connections.

It forms part of the company's Mobilier de Compagnie range of animal-shaped furniture.

See all our stories from Milan in our special MIlan 2009.

Here's some more information from Ibride:

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Over the collections, Ibride has built up a mythology, an iconography filled with images and shapes coming from visual experiences, real or fantasized, with the will to link the products to each other by an invisible thread.

Their very last creation meets up with the Mobilier de Compagnie collection: a large-scaled mule with its harness. The burden of the animal is the working place, a secretaire, and the animal’s structure can be used as an additional storage. The animal is linked by a wire to the working tools inherent to a contemporary secretaire: both lighting and internet connexions.

The design studio Ibride combines the competences of Carine Jannin, business manager and Rachel & Benoît Convers, graphic designer and designer. Since 1996, this homogeneous trio has seduced the interior industry with remarkable designs.

Their wish to change the usual perception of the objects they design and to bestow on them almost a human presence makes their creations unique.Their designs offer two different readings as they are both attractive and meaningful. Ibride reveals the hidden side of the objects, endows them with a secret life and... What is common becomes extraordinary.

The name suits the "Ibride" furniture and accessories, the word 'Ibride' itself being a play on words in French meaning "hybrid". The relationship between the furniture and its user is beyond the loyal and devoted service and achieves the notion of feeling and tenderness.