Thursday, June 19, 2008

Around the Outside


Here are a brother and sister team, Thien and My, from Montreal, who call themselves Periphere.  Thien was at the show, and he was very nice and clearly excited about his work, which as I've said, can be contagious.

They're a fairly young company with a relatively small number of nonetheless impressive and unique pieces.

Here's their table called "Axes," click them:


This wasn't at the show as far as I can recall.  First of all, it's just an aesthetically beautiful piece of furniture.  It's such a simple idea, but I honestly don't think I've ever seen a dining table with no right angles before.  It's sort of awkward, but in a very good way.  As their design manifesto would suggest--it ends up questioning everything.  How you interact with your dining table, how you interact with the other diners sitting at it, how the table interacts with the geometry of the room it's placed in, everything.

Here's an outdoor bench called "Canyon":

Very sculptural, and I think fantastic poolside.  Both the forms and the sort of velvety matte black finish of it seems very shark-like to me, or at least generally reminiscent of things marine.

My favorite of their works was this large lounge chair, "Sway":



This is a beautiful piece anyway, but the red tube-metal frame really takes this one beyond.  Otherwise it's kind of just a nicely sculpted upholstery piece (that might tip over), but with the frame you're suddenly dealing with geometry, positive and negative space, line and color, weight and balance, and the relationship the piece has to the room around it.

Periphere
(Montreal) 514-733-8588

©2008, Ryan Witte

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