The Sadl Stool by LMBRJK

One of my favourite finds this month, for its organic shape and intriguing patterns and textures, is the Sadl Stool by Antwerp-based design studio LMBRJK. It’s a great example of what happens when designers mix traditional processes and modern technology.

Founded in 2012, and located in a converted coach-house in a regenerated industrial area close to the harbour, LMBRJK are husband-and-wife team Jon and Masa Kleinhample, who have developed their own method for making laser-cut wooden furniture with complex organic forms.

Masa explains:

“We respect traditional hand-making but at the same time want to push it further, so we get to these shapes and forms that would be very hard to do any other way than with our laser-cut assembly process.”

While Jon adds:

“We create furniture that’s a mix between traditional craft and digital design. It would be impossible to make these products with traditional techniques.”

Traditional handcraft meets digital design

Their Digital Wood collection is created by using software designed for architectural modelling to manipulate a digital 3D form, and then slicing this virtual model into profiles.

Each of these ‘slices’ is then accurately reproduced from thin sheets of birch plywood using a laser cutter before being painstakingly glued together by hand to form the three-dimensional object originally created by computer modelling.

Once glued and dried, each piece is carefully hand-finished using traditional woodworking techniques, resulting in a tactile surface that shows off the striated patterns and contouring of the digital model.

The Sadl Stool comes in three versions. Raw is unsanded, with its layers looking like an armadillo shell, Sanded has smooth, sinuous contours (images above) and Patina, which has been sanded and stained dark brown.