This French-style boudoir stool’s legs will remind most people of the famous French dancing style known as the can-can. The high kicking dance was hugely popular but not without its moments of scandal. Traditionally the female dancers would wear costumes with long skirts, petticoats, and stockings, sometimes with garters. This bedroom stool also comes with the decorative features associated with French theatre décor including the stage curtains and border frills. A comfortable and plush upholstered cushion provides a welcoming perch on which to apply, or remove, make-up.

The highly unique and delightfully charming Folies Bergère music hall themed stool will make a lovely addition to a bedroom or bathroom with a decidedly classical or bohemian décor theme. It’s humorous and culturally historical which will appeal greatly to people with a fondness and fascination with traditional French culture and history. It’s also a sexy piece of furniture and for women with a naughty streak, the boudoir stool will sit pretty in a related décor and furniture collection. It can also be used as a small table or purely as a decorative element in its own right without being used as a seating item. Alternatively, it can be situated in the living room, dining room, or hallway, where it will definitely attract the attention of visitors to the home.

You can buy it here: Folies Bergere Boudoir Stool.

It is a Design Toscano exclusive.

Haillard uses a variety of materials in his work including wood, bronze and silver. The most interesting items he incorporates into his furniture pieces though are wild animal skins such as those from crocodiles and ostriches, together with horns and tusks. The similarity between these natural materials and the shape and appearance of insects is clear to see. A beetle can easily be implied with the use of a rhino horn or elephant tusk. The antennae of many insects lend themselves well to inspired arching curves and chair legs. Haillard has combined these observations with the traditional design of African tribal thrones to create a gentle sense of nostalgia for pomp as well as for irony.

The French designer, who was once a cartoon artist, uses materials in a way that does not detract from their natural splendour whilst at the same time manipulating them to fit his imaginative creations. Placed in a domestic interior, the insect chairs would be impossible to ignore and would demand usage. In this sense, the work of Marcel Duchamp might well have been an inspiration.

You can read more about these chairs and their designer here: Michel Haillard Universe.

Via: Trendhunter.

The Julia Bench is made from two different materials and these are an exotic plank of Macassar wood veneer which is unique in each composition. This plank is held together by two hollow squares of stainless steel metal which creates the illusion of the plank floating in the square without seemingly being attached to the frameworks. The effect is amazing and adds interest to the furniture piece when situated in an interior setting of your choice.

As mentioned above, the versatility of the Julia Bench marks it out as a multifunctional furniture piece for use in a variety of rooms. Placed in a living room, the bench can act as a coffee table where coasters, fabric covers, books and vases will accentuate the simplicity of the item. Alternatively, it can be located at the end of a bed in the master bedroom where it will fulfil the need for a table to place clothing, small storage boxes and belongings that will be needed when first getting out of bed.

In another sense, the bench can be used solely as a decorative sculptural piece which will sit in a hallway, dining room or kitchen and bring a contemporary aura to the setting and interior as a whole. It can then be brought out as a functional furniture piece when a party or social function is held in the home and extra seating is required. As a cat owner, I can just imagine the delightful scene of your cat resting upon the plank and adding natural grace and elegance to the bench-cum-table-cum-sculpture.

You can buy this indoor bench from here: Julia Bench – Coffee Table, Sculpture and Bench All In One.

Price: $798

We often find travelling to be a rather uncomfortable and tiring experience where we have to wait in queues, sit in airplanes for hours on end and battle to find an unoccupied taxi once we arrive at our destination. This unique suitcase chair seems to play on this theme and is composed of a steel reinforced structure together with delightfully comfortable upholstery which has been covered with Liberty print floral fabrics.

Wooden legs which have been whitewashed so as to match the white linen, add a stylish finish to the overall furniture piece. Katie Thompson who studied in Cape Town likes to work with old and discarded items which she then transforms into new pieces of art and furniture. Extraordinary transformations take place which have made her name synonymous with energy and creativity.

You can read more about her and see more of her work, here: South African Designer Katie Thompson.

Unfortunately, this Suitcase Chair has been sold and is one of a kind.

H/T: Sutkutusu.

The KAIRO chair as seen in the picture is made from a solid piece of cedar wood which has been carved into what can be described as an armchair. This is due to the curving effect and double arc feature of the seat which allows the sitter to rest their arms on the edges when in a sitting position. The inspiration for this chair is said to have come from his land of birth, Egypt and the ancient Egyptian boat designs and hieroglyphs.

Rashid’s desire in making this KAIRO chair, named after the place where he was born, was to create “a piece of furniture from a simple block of wood, with the ‘objective of removing the least quantity of wood possible from the trunk”. The widely respected guest lecturer and part-time DJ, certainly knows how to work creatively with natural forms and to make impressive and beautiful furniture pieces without taking away the very essence of the material used.

See also: The website of Karim Rashid.

H/T: Bonluxat.

The pure crystal bathtub is in fact one of a pair. The other was sold to a Russian magnate back in 2008 for £567,000 (around $859,000). Both bathtubs were individually sculpted by expert craftsmen in Italy. Parts of the surface are purposefully left rough in order to show the natural beauty of the crystal. As one would expect, each of the two tubs is unique in appearance.

The impressive 7ft long crystal bathtub is currently on show in the famous Harrods store in Knightsbridge, London until the end of July 2010.

Source: Daily Mail.

Having won the 2003 Materiaalfonds Prize, this Random Chair is already known as a cut above the rest. In its style, it is reminiscent of a child’s design project involving soggy newspapers wrapped about a soon-to-be-burst balloon. In fact, this is precisely what inspired Bertjan Pot in the first place. However, in this instance, the chair is created using epoxy-dipped carbon fiber which was formed over a single-sided mould. The result is a hollow structure which is not only extremely light but also very strong and thoroughly capable of holding the weight of a human.

The Random Chair is a modern furniture piece ideal for a contemporary room. Bertjan Pot’s delicate yet sturdy chair is both a sculpture and a functioning seat and should be considered as so when deciding on its placement. Light will play an important part as well for the structure and materials used in the creation of the Random Chair are conducive to the display and shadowing of the lights and the general interior.

For example, one can imagine this chair placed beside a contemporary floor lamp in a minimalist themed living room or bedroom. The light will enter into the chair’s body and draw shadows on the floor and nearby walls. With a myriad of flickering candles, the effect will be magical and will hark back to the mysteries of the Middle Ages and beyond. The possibilities are endless.

Price: $1,219

It’s unfortunate to note that the Sri Lanken elephant is in sharp decline due to hunting and habitat encroachment. At the turn of the 19th Century there were estimated to be 14,000 elephants on the island of Ceylon but now that figure is no more than 3,000, if that. This intricately designed kneeling elephant seat is a respectful interpretation of this magnificent beast which is both stoic in nature and mighty in build.

The kneeling Ceylon elephant seat is made from durastone and has been given a lustrous finish. All in all, this combination gives the elephant seat a marble look which will compliment a wide variety of interior settings. The beautifully intricate swirls on the kneeling elephant’s back add to the mystique and elegance of this Ceylon inspired design piece. It’s sturdy and therefore perfectly safe to sit on if required.

This rich brown-caramel kneeling elephant seat will make a delightful decorative accessory for a room which perhaps has the ambiance of South Asia. Mixed into an interior with colorful Indian fabrics and patterns, this Ceylon elephant seat will provide an extra focal point and seating area for guests and family alike.

Price: $280

The pod stool is made from monkey pod wood which originally comes from Central and South America. However, over the centuries it was transplanted to Asia as well as the Pacific islands such as Hawaii where this particular stool’s monkeypod wood comes from. The sturdy Monkey Pod tree, also known as the Rain Tree, has a lovely butter-gold color which dark brown marbling. This natural beauty offers itself wonderfully to the creation of furniture such as this pod stool.

The pod stool above has a sculptural hole in the center which provides an extra focus and dimension to the stool. Instead of the monkey-pod stool being one stump-like block of wood, the stool offers a circular movement to a room in which the pod stool is placed. Rather like we focus on eyes, we also tend to be attracted to circles in the center of larger forms. What is particularly appealing in regards to this wooden pod stool is the fact it was expertly carved from a single piece of monkeypod wood.

There are a variety of uses this monkey pod stool can suit. It can be placed alone as an accent stool perhaps near the center of a room. The pod stool can also be used as a small side table, end table of accent table located beside a sofa, armchair or even a bed. Another interesting function the pod stool with a whole in the middle can fulfil is as the legs of a glass-top coffee table. This would require buying four of the stools and some craftsmanship on your part.

Price: $198

The sculptural human furniture pieces one can see in the images are by Dzmitry Samal, head of ‘Samal Design’ which is a design studio based in Paris. Samal describes his human furniture creations as being “a mix between the pragmatism and efficiency of the geometrical shapes and sculptural beauty of the human body”. There’s a lot of philosophical points to be made regarding these beautiful and unusual furniture pieces. I’m reminded somewhat unsurprisingly of Franz Kafka’s short story ‘The Metamorphosis’, where a man turns into an insect one morning. However, in the case of these sculptural furniture pieces, the human form is transforming into something altogether more attractive and indeed, functional.

The designer of the sculptural human furniture pieces, Dzmitry Samal, has a rich cultural background and education in design. He’s worked with fellow designers from around the world and travelled widely during his studies and for work. The sculptural human furniture pieces are therefore the creation of a highly imaginative mind which has been cultivated through experience in countries such as Belarus, Italy and France.

I’ve written about living human furniture before but these pictured here are something else. Their metamorphosis from human to furniture, or alternatively from furniture to human, create existential questions about our very nature and how we shape the world around us. Do we become furniture to our surroundings or perhaps we are merely decorative art like a poster on the wall? For designers, the questions about how furniture is designed can be given an extra impetus through the viewing of these sculptural human furniture pieces. Surely a wardrobe for example can be made to mirror the main torso of the human body? A wardrobe does act as a storage area for clothes which hide the main frame of a human being after all.

The sculptural human furniture pieces in many ways echo the shape of the human body when interacting with the furniture piece involved. For example, the closet shows the human body reaching out to take something from within, such as a shirt or coat. A floor lamp is shaped like a human arm reaching for the on and off switch. Low shelving is shaped like the bended knees of someone searching for a book on the lower levels. The furniture becomes us, like a mirror image, a statement of who we are.

You can read a lot more about the talented artist and designer Dzmitry Samal on his website which can be found here: Dzmitry SAMAL Design Website.

For more images and information of this human furniture collection see: Sculptural Human Furniture by Dzmitry Samal.

Note: All images in this post belong to Dzmitry Samal and were reproduced here with his permission.