Confrontation in jaws
Pine furniture?
Nobody wanted to see them again after they were felt to be standard in living rooms and children's rooms in the late seventies and eighties.
The yellowish color, the strong grain, the many knotholes!
For some, the memory of a youth between a softwood closet and bed is traumatic to this day.
Time for exposure therapy! For example with the furniture and home furnishings of the Finnish label Vaarnii, which was launched this year. His first collection is made exclusively from pine wood because the two founders Antti Hirvonen and Miklu Silvanto have dedicated themselves to local production. And pine is the most common type of wood in wooded Finland.
So at Vaarnii there is the full droning of softwood: no colored varnish and no veneer hide the knotholes, and the material is processed neatly thick and angular. For example with the simple dining table "Kolmio", which the Danish designer Cecilie Manz designed for the label. Or with the “Coffee Table” by the London duo Soft Baroque, which with its crossed logs seems to parody a log cabin. Designer Max Lamb peeled the soft curves of his “Lounge Chair” from solid pine blocks.
The Vaarnii founders deliberately wanted to set themselves apart from the typical Finnish design in terms of materials and shapes: the curvy armchairs, stools and tables that Alvar Aalto once had bent from birch wood. They are still produced by Artek today and are considered icons of modernity. Instead, Antti Hirvonen and Miklu Silvanto turned to traditional furniture making in their homeland. Modest, rustic utensils that were made from local materials and had to prove themselves in everyday life. The material is also traditional in a certain way: You do not get the wood from one of the country's large forest plantations, which grow and harvest pines on an industrial scale. Instead, they use trees that have grown more slowly, up to a hundred years old,which are individually felled in sustainably managed forests. Their wood is denser and harder and is therefore particularly suitable for furniture.
The two founders want their products to last at least as long as the trees have grown.
The Vaarnii furniture should easily survive the next two to three pine revival.
Simply solid
The name of this Italian kitchen manufacturer is a promise: Very Simple Kitchen.
Anyone who has planned a kitchen for themselves knows that it is complicated.
There are countless models in all conceivable dimensions, materials and designs, and without experience or professional support, planning like this can easily turn into a desperate project.
Very Simple Kitchen has made simplicity its concept and limited the possibilities from the outset. Because the company from Bologna, founded in 2018, only offers free-standing modules, the elements do not have to be laboriously adapted to the spatial conditions, as is the case with a classic fitted kitchen. The modules have this special, very solid loft or workshop look, their industrial aesthetics with the stable details may not please everyone. But the modular basis also makes the kitchens quite flexible, so when you move they can be more easily taken with you and set up elsewhere than custom-made built-in units.
There is a configurator on the Very Simple Kitchen website to try out individual solutions. This allows you to quickly get a first impression, the price of each variant is automatically included in the calculation. There is a choice of various cabinet and shelf elements, as well as modules with sinks, dishwashers and stoves, all parts can be combined with one another as required. The kitchens are made in Italy from stainless steel sheet, they are available bare and untreated or powder-coated in different colors. There is a range of materials to choose from for the worktop and splash guard, of course stainless steel, but also wood, marble, terrazzo or Fenix laminate. Recently, the modules are also available in a version made of wide plywood elements, pure or colored, which have a very homely effect.