Kajsa Willner’s Crafted Potential Collection
Born in Malmö, Sweden; Kajsa Willner is the founder of a playful, research-based and experimental studio — Studio Kajsa Willner. Her growing up in rural Sweden led to her discovering and making use of art as a form of internal travel, one that allows her to combine her passions (musical shows, movies, children's theatre, museums, playing with (her) friends) to create different worlds.
A lot of Willner’s work is driven by a strong interest in materials, interdisciplinary collaboration and to pave the way for designers to work and place in new ways.
Kajsa’s Crafted Potential collection exhibits and showcases the search for various methods and approaches that could have the ability to reintroduce residual materials into the manufacturing process of furniture design.
This collection is part of an exhibition arranged by Olsson & Gerthel, as Kajsa was selected as a designer to collaborate with invited furniture maker, Fogia. Crafted Potential celebrates all the opportunities with looking at waste as an untapped material resource; and how different materials can inspire to implement systems where residual materials can achieve their full potential.
For this exhibition and collection, Kajsa was open and looking to explore the potential of reintroducing production waste back into the furniture-making system, using it as an untapped material resource.
She (Kajsa) and Fogia’s collaboration went her way as the company was very much open and transparent about its industrial by-products — sawdust, textile fibre, wood scraps, leather. Kajsa also went to the company’s factory in Poland to have a better understanding of how the facility really worked and to gain a better understanding of the various materials’ complete life cycles.
All designs in this exhibition were made out of waste like wood scraps in various types and sizes. The collection has a pair of crafted wet moulded leather vases, vases made out of scrapwood and finished with glossy water-based paint evoking lustrous Japanese lacquer, scones made from recycled Nature Loft, an armchair, a low table, a plinth and a pedestal table.
