Rocking stool
Japanese geishas, Africa and my grandfather. These things never had anything to do with each other. They only met in my head, in that infinite container where I store all impressions, experiences and information, just to sometimes I take out a few things and compose something completely different. This was also the case when I started designing this stool. I first took out the earlier memory I had. It was a stool that my grandfather made in his youth, then he used it for the rest of his life, and finally this little object over lived its creator, and has a deep personal meaning to me. The second was a formal preview from Japan, the geisha headrest. It is a tiny trapezoidal platform that is used for sleeping to support the head with a curved bottom and padded top, so it rocks following the movement of the sleeping geisha. It really got me that, it is a stable support, and it’s agile but this makes it so stable. Further researching, I discovered the art of african headrests, finding thousand year old pieces carved from solid wood. Then I learned what a significance these have culturally as personal objects that one makes and then uses for a lifetime. So, these ideas were swirling in my head while designing this object. One that remains, one that’s personal, one that’s stable and agile at the same time.
Consultant teachers: Péter Tímár, Tamás Máté, Tamás Bene
