A look at how colour has moved industrial-style furniture into a new era
Jennifer Newman Studio Ltd
Based in Clerkenwell in London, Jennifer Newman produces a range of bright furniture which would have an industrial look except for the super-bright powder coats she uses to create a range of fun an functional tables and chairs. Her furniture designs are for use in hotels, offices, homes and outdoors and fabricated in powder-coated aluminium and a variety of timbers. She does export but prefers the sustainable option of granting a license to a manufacturer in the locality for them to make the products.
Jennifer Newman Studio’s Box Planter – A planter that can be wheeled around the construction of this makes it suitable for home or office, indoors or outdoors.
Box planter 400 x 400 x 470mm high (with castors)
Fabricated from powder-coated aluminium, here shown in RAL 5024 Pastel Blue and RAL 2008 Bright red-orange
Jennifer Newman Studio’s Groove table is hand made from a single piece of aluminium, suitable for indoors or outdoors and has self-levelling legs
Jennifer Newman’s Groove table fabricated from powder-coated aluminium, here shown in RAL 6038 Luminous Green
The Robot side table by &New
&New is a furniture company, launched in 2014, by a British and Finnish design duo Jo Wilton and Mirka Grohn. The furniture has a distinct Scandinavian touch especially in the use of bright and pastel colours. All the products are made in Britain and are only produced in small batches and each piece is not quite identical, a deliberate celebration of what the designers believe constitutes beauty.
The robot side table is an open shelf on zig zag legs fabricated from solid steel and powder-coated and is suggested for use as a bedside table.
&New’s Robot side table shown in red, turquoise and yellow
&New have a range of other completely charming products including a clothes rail, console table, candle holders, desks and shelf units.
&New’s ‘A’ clothes rail in pink with a brass rail
The &New ‘A’ clothes rail in powder-coated steel, available in pink, turquoise, yellow, beetroot/brass and blue.
&New’s Giraffe Console table here shown in yellow powder-coated steel.
45 Kilo’s Busy Table produced by MYKILOS
45 Kilo is a design studio, with a store in Berlin, founded in 2007 by Philipp Schöpfer and Daniel Klapsing whilst they were studying at the Bauhaus University in Weimar, Germany. Their focus is very much on industrialised production processes and using industrial materials in a very direct and unrefined style.
Their Busy Table is based on Jean Prouvé’s EM table but translated into modern manufacturing techniques. The splay leg provides leg room and gives a lightweight look.
45 Kilo’s The Busy Table designed by 45 Kilo and produced by MYKILOS (founded by 45 Kilo). Base in powder-coated steel and top in linoleum and blockboard. Here shown in RAL 1018 Zinc Yellow.
Jean Prouvé’s EM table and Standard Chair
We thought it would be interesting, having raised the subject of Jean Prouvé to compare the Kilo 45 table with the original EM table. This was designed in 1950 with the base fabricated from bent sheet steel and tubular steel.
Jean Prouvé, born in 1901, considered himself an engineer having trained as a metal artisan before opening a workshop in Nancy in 1924. Following the production of several furniture designs he set up a factory in 1947 however the board of directors did not always agree and in 1953 he left the business and went to work as a consultant on architectural projects in Paris. The objects on which Prouvé worked were wide-ranging, from lighting to pre-fabricated houses – anything that could be produced using industrial methods. He applied the principles of engineering to his products, considering stress and load-bearing points as a route to the design solution. Corbusier said of him that he was “indissolubly an architect and an engineer, since everything he touches and designs immediately takes on an elegant, beautiful form while he finds brilliant solutions to resistance and manufacturing.” JeanProuvé died in 1984 but in 2002 Vitra liaised with his family and then began to again manufacture his furniture designs.
The EM table designed by Jean Prouvé in 1950 and sold today through Vitra. The table here is shown with an ashphalt 67 top and chocolate 40 powder-coated legs. Shown here with Prouvé’s Standard Chair with Japanese red 06 chair back and seat and mint 91 powder-coated base.