Impressions II detail. Illustrative design study. Courtesy of Oyster Wellness.
Look beneath an Impressions tabletop and the familiar arrangement of legs gives way to rounded, colored forms. Some meet along curved seams; others open up to reveal the space beyond. The base becomes something to follow with the eye.
The collection brings sculptor and artist Ian Love together with furniture designer and maker Alex Muradian. Their collaboration for Oyster Wellness explores how color, texture and material shape the experience of an everyday object.
A base made from parts
The sculptural base is conceived as an assembly. Its elements are formed and finished separately, then nested together. Each keeps its own contour, even where the finished composition appears to flow continuously from one color into another.
That distinction is central to the design. A seam describes the meeting of two forms; an opening allows the room to remain visible through the base. Above them, the wood tabletop provides a continuous surface. In Impressions I, a recessed steel plate beneath the top supplies structure while keeping that relationship visually simple.
Color follows the contour
Pigmented microcement gives the base its colored surfaces. The wood above introduces a different material character, so the table can be read both as a whole and as a set of contrasting parts.
The design studies show how much depends on where those colors meet. In a close view, a band of green curves around gray and sand; in another, pink and ochre frame an opening. Color helps distinguish the volumes without flattening them into a pattern. Their rounded edges and changing depth remain visible.
Impressions I gathers the forms into one base. Impressions II carries the idea across two bases beneath an extended top. The open interval between them becomes another part of the composition.
From a table to a family of forms
The table model was developed in ZBrush. In subsequent modelling work, Alex explored how related forms might become stools, chairs and smaller tables. His brief retained a crucial feature of the original: multiple pieces coming together within a base.
Those studies expand a design question already present in the tables: how can separate volumes belong together while remaining distinct? Changes in scale, color and arrangement offer different answers. This is the continuing exploration behind Impressions, with the first tables giving it a clear starting point.
Explore Impressions I and Impressions II, or see the collection within Collectible Design.