Faye Toogood: Roly Poly

Roly Poly by Faye Toogood Last pieces presented at Milan Week of Design by our favourite Faye Toogood, British designer whose furniture and objects demonstrate a preoccupation with materiality and experimentation. Roly-Poly represents a new stage in the ongoing evolution of Faye Toogood’s numbered Assemblage furniture project; for this fourth iteration, the sharp geometry and postindustrial materials of the previous collection have been ousted by softened edges, high-gloss fibreglass construction and an innocent plumpness inspired by children’s playthings. "Chairs, tables and daybeds acquire a rounded, welcoming chunkiness, with wide legs and gently linear forms, while the popular Elements Table is reinterpreted as a ludic interplay of voids and feminine curves. Each of the new pieces has been developed as a clay maquette before being rendered in layered fibreglass, chosen as a medium for its tensile strength and sculptural qualities. Surfaces are polished smooth in places, left raw and untreated in others; the resultant textural dialogue is carried across into hand-woven yarn throws and the graphic, contoured Play tapestry – an abstract image derived from an infant’s building blocks. The palette throughout consists of subtle variations of off-white, eschewing gleaming futuristic brightness in favour of the comforting dairy hues of mid-century Bakelite. In keeping with Faye Toogood’s longstanding principle of supporting British artisans and craftsmanship, all of the pieces are designed and manufactured entirely within the UK." Words: Faye Toogood, Thisispaper Photography: Courtesy of Faye Toogood