Creativity isn’t always about a huge idea. It can also be about combining existing ideas in a new way. Two relatively simple ideas, such as a wooden chair and luminous paint, for instance.
Swedish designers Stina Löfgren and Kristoffer Sundin combined the vivid colour with an everyday object: a chair made of beech wood. The design almost speaks for itself. Etchings were translated into a grooved design which was carved into the wood.
The two design graduates combined talents. Stina Löfgren’s illustration work mixed with Kristoffer Sundin’s furniture making experience. The piece is crafted with a cnc-milling machine. After the hand-drawn pattern has been carved, the whole chair is painted with the luminous paint, which consists of a filler mixed with the fluorescent pigment.
The chair is then sanded down, exposing the beech wood and keeping the engraved pattern intact. This is the easiest way of giving the chair a neat finish. It is not the most efficient (as much of the luminous paint is sanded away in the process), but it leaves a completely smooth surface.
To finish off, the seat was given a final coat of varnish to seal the pigment in. This is why the sanding down is used, making the chair’s colours shine, also in normal, ambient lighting.
It may not be the most sustainable way of producing a glow-in-the-dark chair, but it does look great. As a result, this luminous chair raised some eyebrows at Stockholm Design Week this year – even in the dark.
More on the designers: Stina Löfgren, Kristoffer Sundin.
Photography by Viktor Sjödin.