18th June 2018

Norwegians in New York

As you might expect from a design fair organised and curated by the scrupulous Sight Unseen team, Offsite – part of last month’s NYCxDesign – was awash with stylish, irresistibly Instagram-able pieces. One show that particularly set our hearts a-flutter was Norway x New York, an annual collaboration between Norwegian and US designers, now in its third edition.

The premise is as follows: the Sight Unseen team matches up two designers from Norway and the US, who collaborate across the Atlantic to produce a product together. The design scenes of the two countries share a lot in common – both have more emerging designers than they do manufacturers and both are moving towards models of self-initiated production and distribution – but there are some big differences too. For example, Aiden Bowman of Brooklyn studio Trueing, which specialises in collectable one-offs, told us of his very different approach to his partner, Norway’s Andreas Bergsaker, who now based in Copenhagen works in-house at design behemoth Hay.

Ann Kristin Einarsen.

Among the sea of stunning collaborations, one in particular rose above the waves: Ann Kristin Einarsen’s collaboration with Pat Kim. It took the shape of a trio of table lamps, each combining Ann Kristin’s expertise in gorgeously tactile ceramics with soft, strokable wooden forms by Pat. In one, the light source rises through the centre of wooden and ceramic rings, like a game of hoopla but where the quoits got stuck. On another, the bulb and its wooden support is threaded through a ceramic circle, akin to a Christmas cracker puzzle where you have to – through an ingenious slight of hand – disentangle the seemingly trapped parts.

As we were so enamoured with the three lamps, we were keen to chat to Ann Kristin about her collaboration with Pat and how they made it happen. Here she is, live from New York…

Rolla by Ann Kristin Einarsen.

How did you come with the idea?

I work with ceramics and Pat Kim works with wood and he turns wood and ceramics you have a turning motion in throwing. Even though I cast, a lot of my shapes are based on circles or round in a way because of the manufacturing process. Both of us work with cylindrical shapes, so that was a natural starting point. We both wanted to do something sculptural; it could have an implied function but it doesn’t need to be a functional object.

How did the collaboration with Pat Kim work in practice? Did you design over Skype?

We cheated! We’re two very hands-on people, who work directly with materials, so the Skype-and-sketch method of collaboration felt very strange. Instead, I came here to meet Pat, which was so much better given how tactile our work is. When I came to New York I brought some samples of different types of clay, bowls and doughnut shapes and we played around with what we could find in his studio. We experimented with colour swatches and then did some sketching. We had some fun with it.

Plant Stand by Pat Kim.

What’s the plan for the light after the show?

We wanted to do something without having a plan! To have some fun playing around and not being very sensible. We may sell them as prototypes, but that wasn’t our initial plan.

Pat Kim X Ann Kristin Einarsen.

As you might have guessed, we have a big thing for Norwegian design here at Zetteler. To find out more about what we do for the Royal Norwegian Embassy, take a look at its client page here.