Nendo’s Watercolour collection looks like furniture made of painted paper

Nendo’s Watercolour collection looks like is made of painted paper

Nendo debuts at Design Basel 2018 with the poetic Watercolour collection: steel furniture were treated to look like they were cut our from a paper sheet with bleeding blue-hues.

The Watercolour Collection by Nendo for Friedman Benda at Design Miami/ Basel 2018 - Photo by Akiiro Yoshida. Courtesy of Nendo.

The Watercolour Collection by Nendo for Friedman Benda at Design Miami/ Basel 2018 – All photos by Akiiro Yoshida; courtesy of Nendo.

Basel 2018 – Japanese design studio Nendo has created an 18-piece metal furniture series inspired by the effects of bleeding blue-hued watercolour paint on a white paper surface. The Watercolour collection was developed for New York City gallery Friedman Benda and debuted at Design Miami / Basel 2018.

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The designs’ soft, rounded shapes convey a delicate sense of lightness. The collection includes twin chairs joined to each other on one side, seats with protruding large panels and tables with holes crossed by thin tubular legs which create multiple levels.

The pieces were designed to look as though they were cut and folded by hand. “In order to create a foundation that resembles paper and to easily blur the ink paint on the objects, the metal frames and surfaces were repeatedly and thoroughly sanded, applied with primer and finished with matte white paint”. Explain at Nendo.

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To create beautiful colour bleeds as if soaked in the furniture with perfect blurring expressions, all painting was done by hand, section by section, tapping the paint gently with soft pulp paper.

This meticulous colouring process was created with a mix of two tones of aqueous inks which takes time to dry, and the objects are finished with a protective clear matte layer that further accentuates their flat paper-like appearance.

“Pursuing an interest in painterly effects, custom colouring expressions were designed specifically for each object according to its shape and elements.” A trial and error method was used to perfectly place the colours and choose the right paint, tools and colouring techniques.

This production process allowed the opportunity to play with animated colour effects such as colour that blends in meeting points, overlapping parts that create stains on one another and paint that seems as if dripping down in a waterfall effect on multi-layered objects.