This Grasp Lamp, by Danish industrial designer Thomas Albertsen, isn't really a lamp in the technical sense: Instead it's a structure to hold lighting. Which is to say, the lamp has no wiring, just a (presumably magnetic) connection point where you pop in a rechargeable LED light.

It comes in three flavors: The Grasp Garden Spear, the Grasp Wall and the Grasp Portable. All are all-weather.

Strangely, manufacturer Frandsen doesn't show the charging set-up. I wonder if it's a dock-type arrangement or a cable.

I guess the key benefit is that you can put a lamp anywhere without having to run wires, and don't need to move the entire lamp to recharge it. Overall I find the concept novel, but I'd have to live with one of these for a while to assess the true usefulness of the arrangement.

Space may be infinite, but it has the same problem we do on Earth: Not enough housing. Builders of space habitats are constrained by shipping capacity. While rocket launches have become cheaper and more frequent, there are only so many building materials you can cram into the payload. "For example, the ISS took more than 40 flights," writes Max Space, "and cost more than $100 billion to build. Max Space can provide the equivalent cubic volume of the ISS in space for $200 million—including launch—bringing the cost down by over a hundred-fold."

Company founder Maxim de Jong, a pioneer of "soft system space architecture," is the world's premier expert on using expandable materials in space. (Two experimental expanding-material spacecraft of his design, Genesis I and Genesis II, have been orbiting the planet since 2006 and 2007.) Here's how his latest design, the Max Space 20, would deploy:

Here are some shots of the full-scale ground prototype:

"Max Space expandables use an entirely unique design approach and philosophy. Our expandables incorporate 'isotensoid' architecture whereby every structural fiber element remains unencumbered and free to assume an ideal geometry for optimum load-bearing capability. The benefits of the Max Space design are enormous ranging from lowest possible mass and cost to unsurpassed predictability and unlimited scalability. Despite the conceptual simplicity of the Max Space design, the challenges of its practical implementation were overcome by the lifelong relentlessness of founder Maxim de Jong's design acumen."

As for weathering impacts from space debris, the company says their material is "safer and stronger than traditional hard modules. This is largely due to the architecture composed of a multi-layered system of fiber-based ballistic shielding of much greater resilience than aluminum and titanium."

The Max Space 20 is so named because it provides 20 cubic meters (706 cubic feet) of interior space. That's a far cry from the ISS' habitable volume of 388 cubic meters (13,696 cubic feet), but the company can't pass the battery of required testing hurdles all in one go; so the plan is to launch the 20 unit in 2026, followed in the next four years by the Max Space 100 and Max Space 1000, the latter of which will properly dwarf the ISS.

"More volume, less cost" is the company's motto. Here's their pitch:

In the UK, where drinking warm beer was a thing, pint glasses were an appropriate vessel for centuries. In 20th century Germany, a new type of beer vessel evolved along with the technology of refrigeration: The stange, which translates to "pole" or "rod," as that's what the narrow-but-tall vessel resembled.

Stangen are used to serve Cologne's Kölsch style of beer, which is best imbibed cold; thus the glasses hold just 100-200mL (3.4 – 6.8 oz), allowing you to get it down your gullet before the room warms it up. The narrow design exposes a minimal amount of beer to the ambient air, and also allows a frothy head to form.

The emergence of these glasses also spawned a new product design for beer hall servers. The kranz ("wreath") tray made it far easier to whisk loads of the diminutive glasses to thirsty customers.

This object might baffle Westerners visiting Japan:

To give you some context, you'd find it in a traditional noodle shop.

It's an old-school spice vessel, invented prior to blowmolding. They often hold shichimi (a spice blend) and are easily made with local materials. The body is simply a bamboo stalk. The cork is a piece of wood that's been tapered, and the plug is a smaller piece of bamboo.

Modern versions are machine-made and jointed like woodwork, but still made of bamboo.

These newer versions obviously require a lot more manufacturing steps, and don't make sense versus the older version—until you consider that Japan's economy traditionally prioritized keeping people employed over profit.

The traditional ones are about 4 bucks, the newer ones, $7.

At first glance, wearable speakers are a strange bit of kit. When Bose released their Soundwear Companion in 2017, I couldn't see the use case. But as I age it becomes more obvious. I frequently use captions while watching shows or movies, as I have a difficult time making out the dialogue, particularly if it's sci-fi with technical language. There are also times when I'm doing multi-room tasks, would like to listen to a podcast, but cannot wear headphones as I need to keep an ear out for animal care reasons. With full hands, carrying a Bluetooth speaker becomes inconvenient.

There must not have been enough old people paying attention; Bose quickly bailed out of the wearable speaker market, quietly axing the Soundwear Companion in 2020. No reason was provided, so we can assume poor sales/weak demand. Competitor Sony, however, who released a Japanese-market wearable speaker in 2017 and brought it to the U.S. a couple years later, has remained in the space. (On its U.S. debut, Engadget called the speaker's form factor "baffling.")

Sony's original SRS-WS1, shown above, evolved into the slimmed-down SRS-NB10, shown below:

The trend in tech is for things to get smaller and lighter. However, Sony's seen a gap in the market—essentially, the use case I described in the first paragraph—and has now scaled the wearable speaker up, with their forthcoming Bravia Theater U Wearable TV Speaker.

"Never again struggle to hear dialogue," they write. "Our X-Balanced Speaker Unit enhances movies and dramas with cinema-quality audio so every word spoken by the actors is clear and precise. [The speaker] increases sound pressure and reduces distortion for clear dialogue."

Whereas the slim SRS-NB10 weighs 113g (3.9 oz), the Bravia model is plumper and weighs 268g (9.45oz). That's because they've added surround sound tech, claiming the device offers "personalized home theater sound."

There's a flexible component connecting the two speakers. The company claims the design is comfortable to wear for long stretches, that "they'll stay in place, even when you lean back and relax" and that the battery's good for 12 hours on normal volume.

It can be paired with multiple devices, so you could hit pause while watching a show and switch to taking a phone call.

What I'm most curious about is how the sphere of sound it supposedly creates sounds to others nearby; the company says you can "Play movies at high volume without having to worry about disturbing sleeping partners or kids." We'll have to wait for reviews to see.

At press time Sony hadn't named a release date, just a price: $300.

These stunning furniture pieces are by Australian furniture designer/builder Brodie Neill (who did that ReCoil table we looked at earlier). First off, this Bonsai shelving unit was commissioned by a client. It's made of bronze and hollow:

The Atmos desk is "formed from a single surface of infinitely recyclable stainless steel," and was produced in a batch of eight units:

The E-Turn bench is also made of stainless steel:

As for more humble materials, Neill's Latitude bench is made of pine dowels:

If you're wondering about the sharp materials departure for the last piece, it was a challenge put to Neill by a client. "When asked to re-envisage pine dowels into a new design," Neill explains, "my first instinct was to completely shift the perception of these linear elements by building volume through repetition.?"?

"Reminiscent of traditional Japanese bamboo constructions where linear elements are bound together to create seemingly simple scaffolding-like structures, my Latitude bench sought to lay bare its structural integrity of 422 interlaced pine dowels, in a practical yet innovative craft-led response.?"

Neill's posted a mini-build-video of the Latitude:

Muddycap is the handle of an anonymous artist/designer whose bio reads "I make chairs and shits." His Instagram is a deep portfolio of insane chair designs. (Most appear to be renderings, though he can be seen making models in some shots and occasionally shows IRL full-size builds.)

The sheer amount of work is impressive, with multiple new designs being posted each week. Come for the Postmodern rocker, stay for the crying Spongebob's cousin chair.

Tons more to see here.

Korean artist/designer Oneseo Choi must have a steady supply of castoff aluminum extrusions. His "Pattern of Industry" series uses them to make furniture:

Because Choi is branded both an artist and designer, it's a little trickier to evaluate the work. If it's art, it's essentially beyond reproach from this blog. If it's design, from a cost perspective the material choice doesn't make sense, unless the extrusions are surplus (or unless it targets the luxury market, where nothing is meant to make sense).

In any case, the series has proved to be wildly popular. As seen below, Choi has won over a half-dozen commissions to populate coffee shops, department stores, offices, corporate lobbies, model houses for real estate developers, and even Adidas' flagship store in Seoul with pieces from the series.

London-based Scott Richler's design background is atypical: He's worked as both an architect and a jewelry designer. Both disciplines have clearly informed his Harlow Chandelier:

The shades are mold-blown glass, available in white or smoked grey. The structures are available in finishes of brass, nickel, copper, bronze or black steel.

The Harlow Chandeliers are made to order in Montreal by Gabriel Scott, the furniture and lighting brand Richler founded.

Italian industrial designer Bruno Munari designed this radical Cubo posacenere ("Cube ashtray") around 1954:

Image: Di Albertozanardo - CC BY-SA 4.0

Placing the butts inside the box was completely outside-the-box; up until that point, anything we'd call an ashtray was an open dish, with the crushed butts and ash clearly visible.

Image: Di Albertozanardo - CC BY-SA 4.0

Munari explained his thinking: "I thought I'd do something that would hide the mess, because when we're at the table and there's someone smoking we have a plate of food and a plate of butts in front of us, which isn't very nice."

No manufacturer was interested, and the design sat on the shelf for three years. Finally, manufacturer Danese Milano decided to give it a go in 1957.

The shell is made of compression-molded (non-flammable) melamine, and the insert is an anodized aluminum sheet with four bends in it.

Mixed results on the UX, I'd say. On the one hand, breezes can't scatter the ash, and you can move it even in a windy environment without making a mess. On the other hand, you can only tell it needs to be emptied when the butts start clogging the slot, and I don't see any way of emptying it without making a mess.

In later years Munari himself criticized the design, or at least an aspect of it. Delivering a design lecture in 1992 in Venice, he said of the Cubo (roughly translated):

"I got the psychological aspect of the product wrong, since generally one thinks of an ashtray with the butts and ash in plain sight. People seeing Cubo for the first time didn't immediately understand its functionality."

It's refreshing to hear a designer actually speak critically about their own work.

Flaws aside, the Cubo is still in production by Danese Milano. They're a lot smaller than you think, coming in two sizes: Small, 6cm (2.4") and Large, 8cm (3.1"). They go for €64 (USD $68) and €82 (USD $87), respectively.

Designer and manufacturer unknown, but this chair hails from 1970s Norway, according to reseller Møbelhøker.

It demonstrates mastery of steam bending and, surprisingly, it's listed as a folding chair. You can guess where the pivot point is, though the hardware is unseen.

The armrests must have been fiendishly difficult to make. Using a shaper or router to remove the material to create the armrest lip would've been straightforward, but the bend angle is crazy, particularly for a piece that thick.

If anyone knows who the designer is, do tell.

This article was written by Scott Jenson and Michael DiTullo

A few recent tech writers have leaked that the new AirPods case will likely have a touch screen. Other earbud makers have tried this as well but it's Apple, so people will naturally have strong opinions, and we're no different. Designers always see what could be, and the two of us having worked with brands like Apple, Google, Motorola, and Nike had some thoughts on what it takes to make a beautiful and intuitive tactile experience in an increasingly digital world. While Apple may or may not decide to put a screen on the AirPod case, it's unfortunately the expected, even safe answer for almost any electronic product today. But is it the right choice? That's the purpose of this exploration, to push at this assumption and see if we can find something more useful and even delightful.

There are clearly advantages to using a touchscreen: 1) It's more flexible: many screens and many functions. 2) It can be updated: anything can be changed later.

These are big advantages but they are mostly practical, covering a broad range of features. There's nothing wrong with that but we want to explore something more visceral and urgent. Instead of many screens and functions, let's focus on what users actually need frequently. In addition, let's go beyond a generic "swipe and tap" interaction style to something more nuanced and analog.

Moving from a digital screen to analog controls is an interesting challenge. It may be a bit more expensive and likely a bit harder to build but those are secondary concerns that can be solved later. Let's not limit our vision too quickly. Instead of being driven by constraints, what if we leaned into analog controls to see if we can find something far more interesting?

First let's point out the elephant in the room: an analog approach will be more limited functionally. That's why most screens exist today, whether it's on your smart fridge or your EV car: screens are popular as you can cram dozens of small buttons on them. But as we said before, this is mostly a production concern, it ignores the many ergonomic, safety, and even sensual aspects of physical controls. But don't take our word for it, there is already a backlash forming against digital screens in cars today.

Early sketch iterations on what a physical layout might be like

Given how common it is to think in terms of long feature lists, how can we justify a more limited approach? Isn't missing any amount of functionality a liability? It depends on your point of view: Engineers tend to think mathematically while Designers tend to think statistically. Both are correct, they just have different goals. If your ONLY goal is to cover every possible feature, then having a touchscreen is reasonable. However, if you think statistically and ask "What do people do 99% of the time?" you get a much different answer.

That's where we started: what do people need to do the vast majority of the time?

* Adjust the volume * Adjust tracks forward and backward * Play/Pause (and depending on context answer/hang up the phone)

The default approach is to have three simple push buttons:

Classic physical 3 button transport controls Apple pioneered on their earpods which became industry standard

Nothing is inherently wrong, it's quite minimalist. But in order to squeeze in extra functionality buttons are "doubled up", so, for example, double tapping the plus button would go to the next track. This isn't just hidden, it's error prone. It may work "on paper" but it's tedious and what we've all had to endure with cheap digital audio devices for years. We can do better.

Our approach is to get rid of this 'doubling up' by adding two additional buttons so each has just a single function, making things easier to learn, reducing errors and allowing each button to physically express what it does. This allows us to create buttons with more character: labels aren't always enough, it's helpful if buttons actually look the part. We feel that a device should physically tell you how to use it, whether reading the labels or by touch when it is in your jacket pocket.

Michael and Scott's explorations, from the left to right: Current design, standard 3 button, Multi Function Button (MFB) with single rocker switch, volume roller with USB and single rocker, volume roller with MFB and rocker

In addition, we wanted to get rid of the 'discrete interaction model' for volume. Instead of tapping the + button 6 times, overshooting and then tapping the - button twice, it's far easier, faster, and pleasurable to use a roller. There is a reason high-end stereos have buttery smooth dials instead of clicky +/- buttons.

To be fair, the play/pause button is slightly multi-function as it also answers/ends phone calls but that is driven by a clear context: if a call comes in, the button answers the call, if not, it plays music. What is harder to ignore is activating the voice assistant. Here we chose to make a compromise and double up the play/pause button: have long-press start the voice assistant. This actually mirrors what the earbuds do today so felt compatible with existing user expectations. Our goal was to avoid long-press functions but this feels like a reasonable compromise.

Using these assumptions, this is our proposed design:

Scott and Michael's final design

Note the layout is not symmetric. The goal is to be able to hold this inside your pocket without looking at it and know exactly what button to press. Each button is indented into the case to prevent accidental use (this would need to be tested) Also notice that we've added an LED into the Play/Pause button to replace the existing "Power LED" on Airpods today. This is a slight nod to manufacturing simplicity (one less case integration). At the very least, it's the same LED on the case today to indicate charging status. But it's also an opportunity to explore other types of feedback. For example, if the LED was multi-colored, it could pulse red if the music was paused.

This transforms the case from a utilitarian shell into a fidget-like device that you'd want to hold in your hand.

Scott and Michael's final design in use

We may be doing our best to create a digital world as quickly as possible, but that won't replace hundreds of thousands of years of evolution making us deeply physical beings. From the time we are infants in our crib we humans love to touch stuff. We love tactility, shape, texture, and color. As designers we don't want to fight that, we want to work with it! We think the world can be better, or at the very least more friendly and enjoyable. So to our fellow hardware designers, developers, engineers, and product managers out there who might be reading this, we dare you to take the road less traveled and make something that people will truly love to use.

About the authors:

Scott Jenson: Scott Jenson started as a UX designer at Apple in 1988, working on System 7, Newton, and the Apple Human Interface guidelines. He moved to London to be Director of Symbian's DesignLab, then joined Google in 2005 where he designed the first version of Google Mobile Maps. He went on to manage the Mobile UX team at Google, then left to be a creative director at frog design in San Francisco. He headed up design for two startups and eventually returned to Google to work in Chrome and Android. He has over 35 patents and is now semi-retired.

Michael DiTullo: Michael DiTullo has been designing iconic products for some of the world's best brands for more than 25 years. He has worked with an amazingly wide assortment of companies including Nike, Google, Honda, Timex, Chantal, Converse, Motorola, Hasbro, Arc Electric Boats and Kirei. Prior to starting his eponymous design studio Michael was Chief Design Officer for Sound United, creative director for frog design's San Francisco studio and spent nearly a decade at Nike. Michael is listed on over 30 patents and has won numerous awards including the IDSA's special lifetime achievement award for contributions to the design industry.

Interior design magazine RUM posted these shots of an NYC apartment renovation:

While the newer furniture pieces are credited, this vernacular chair in the second shot is not:

Image: Piet Albert Goethals

The seatback flows downward to become the front leg, of which there are only three, to handle uneven flooring. It is a fascinating piece of furniture, and one I've never seen before. I am dying to inspect it up close to see how it was joined.

Using Google's image search turns up some vintage French and African chairs that bear some similarity to the design, structurally speaking…

…but none with the elegant gesture and minimal material use of the chair in question, shown larger below. I even love the ungainly, compensatory support beneath the seat that may have been added at a later time (the wood looks just a shade lighter to me). That the angles on the rear feet do not cleanly meet the floor made me wonder if the chair has sagged over time; but that seems unlikely, as if the feet angle did match the floor, the seat would be cast at too steep an angle. You can also see a hint of a handle at the top of the seatback.

Image: Piet Albert Goethals

Do any of you recognize this chair? Do any of you know who designed/built it? I have a bad feeling it was a thrift store find overseas, a one-off made a century ago by someone in a rural area whose name we'll never know. But I'm hoping one of you will recognize it as typical of a particular region and time.

We don't often see softgoods in ID students' portfolios, so this one jumped out at us. This M–W256 project was done by Sven Abplanalp while studying Industrial Design at ECAL:

"M–W256" is a project resulting from a global analysis of connectors from the textile industry. This research resulted in the development of an androgynous clip in order to exploit its advantages.

Adapting to various daily situations, "M–W256" is a versatile bag designed for urban mobility, offering a multitude of configurations, thanks to a universal clip. This symmetrical connector allows the user to modulate the use of this portable container, arranging two straps provided for this purpose as desired.

"In perhaps one of the great ironies of human civilisation," writes Brian Kaller, "mechanical devices to truly magnify human power came along as soon as we didn't need them." Kaller's article, "The Hidden Potential of Bicycles," is well worth a read.

To Kaller's point, bicycles came around in the late 1800s, and the motor car followed soon after. This makes it easy to overlook that bicycles are, in Kaller's opinion, "the most efficient method of using our bodies, allowing us to attain higher machine speeds for longer than we would on muscle power alone – and without using any more fuel or causing any more weather to go haywire."

Speaking of bicycles, remember industrial designer Josep Rubau's aquatic bicycles?

While those transform a pedaling motion into forward thrust in water, a French invention called the Seabike does the same—but gets rid of the middleman, so to speak. The Seabike is essentially a pair of pedals driving a propellor, and is meant to be worn by swimmers.

"It's simple! You pedal, the propeller turns."

"SEABIKE is a portable water bike that is attached to the belt (included with the transport bag). Pedaling it helps you travel across long distances in freshwater and saltwater alike. It allows you to cover distances of several kilometers with moderate energy consumption. The speed of movement in nominal mode is 1 m/s, the maximum speed is 2.2 m/s."

As you can see, this dude is indeed cruising:

Some underwater footage that gives you a closer look:

The Seabike base model runs €290 (USD $309). The Seabike Pro version, which features a quick-release propellor and a ballast weight to adjust its buoyancy, runs €370 (USD $395). The Seabike Premium is the Pro, but made of titanium; they don't say what the other versions are made of.

On a Wire is a record stand as unique as your collection: the only record stand available today that organizes and displays your records simultaneously. On a Wire lives near your turntable, organizing your new, favorite, and new favorite records, while also displaying a record of your choice.

On a Wire was designed for vinyl records and the people who collect them, play them, and love them. Our collections grow and they grow quickly, with new records filling up our shelves, milk crates, plywood boxes, and floors faster than we can listen to them. That's where On a Wire comes in.

On a Wire is a home for your special records, whether they're your frequent listens, rare collectors' pieces, new records, or your whole growing collection. On a Wire keeps these records organized and accessible, your selection visible at a glance without having to dig through the rest of your collection; and when you've chosen the one you want, you can display it right on top.

View the full project here

Yet another AI genie's out of the bottle. The…geniuses over at Microsoft have unveiled their new VASA technology for "Lifelike audio-driven talking faces generated in real time." The tech can use a single snapshot, then animate it to match whatever audio is plugged into it. "Make anyone say anything," is how this reviewer describes it.

It has to be seen to be believed (obviously you need to click the sound on):

Male:

Female:

While it has a slight air of videogame-cut-scene, would you have noticed these aren't real if you weren't told in advance?

Watching them and knowing, it is chilling just how dead the eyes look. I don't know if it's the blinking rate, or if human eyes IRL have some subtle twinkling that we're not aware of, but the demo is downright creepy. Even worse, it's just a matter of time before they attend to this and get it "right."

And as this example shows, it looks like some animation jobs are going to evaporate:

A full demonstration:

Yet another bizarre design origin story.

People come to product and furniture design through different routes. Some go to school and get a degree in Industrial Design. Others become architects, then decide working on smaller-scale stuff is more interesting. In Europe and Scandinavia, some apprentice as cabinetmakers, then discover they've got a knack for design as well as craftsmanship. Still others are simply born relentlessly creative, and by pursuing their passions, fall into a series of wildly unlikely accidents that leads to them becoming designers.

One designer I've met who falls into that latter category is Jory Brigham, his story is nuts. Another designer in that category is Danish designer Arnold Madsen, who passed away in 1989. He's the guy who designed that beautiful Tove Lounge Chair with Henry Schübell; their unlikely partnership, Madsen & Schübell, produced scores of well-regarded furniture pieces in the mid-20th-century.

While trying to untangle why the Tove is often misattributed in listings, I came across interviews with Madsen's daughter and Schübell's son, and pieced together their fascinating backstory.

Arnold Madsen, born in a small town in northern Denmark in 1907, did not study design nor architecture; as a young man he worked as a sailor. Sometime in the 1930s, Madsen got off of a ship in America and decided to stick around, illegally. He somehow found work as a cowboy and learned rodeo riding, according to his surviving daughter, Johna Møhring-Andersen, and was eventually arrested for stealing winter clothes. When the authorities learned he was in the country illegally, he wound up in prison.

"As far as I know, he did not have a bad time in prison," Johna recounts.

After being released Madsen made his way back to Denmark. Seeking work, he apprenticed with an upholstery firm; Madsen was good with his hands, and by 1941 had opened his own upholstery shop. "He could do everything," Johna remembers. "He helped me sew clothes, he built things in the house - and he even lost a finger once in the process.

"My father was always experimenting with materials and making things with his hands. In our house he had a room of his own with a worktable where he would spend hours experimenting until he had an idea."

As an example, he envisioned a chair that was shaped like an open clam. Madsen knew what he wanted it to look like, and knew he had the skills to upholster it; what he didn't have was a knowledge of how to build the frame. He sculpted a small plaster model of what the exterior would look like, then started knocking on the doors of cabinetmaking businesses. He'd show them his model and ask if they could make a frame to help him realize the design.

Images of the plaster model do not exist, but apparently it was quite complicated; no one could figure out how to build the frame. Madsen went down his list of cabinetmaking shops, weathering rejections, and finally arrived at one called Winter & Winding. The foreman there, Henry Schübell, examined the model, then started sketching out a working drawing. Once he had it worked out on paper, Schübell told Madsen he could design the frame and his workers could build it.

However, "they had some problems with it, because it was a difficult construction," says Flemming Schübell, Henry's son. The key difficulty was the transition where the seat meets the back. To remain faithful to Madsen's design, Schübell had to design a piece of joinery that was fiendishly difficult to manufacture. A piece of wood needed to be cut on a bandsaw with a thin blade that could do tight curves. The piece required two curved cuts to be made in the top, and then the piece was rotated, and two curved cuts were made in the bottom. These curves had to meet precisely.

In practice, the shop workers could get one set of these curves right, but not the other. To cut curves on a bandsaw, you guide the piece with your hands. The curves requiring right-hand guidance were achievable, but the other curves, which required left-hand guidance, were too tricky for the workers to nail. So Henry himself stepped in.

"My father could use his left hand as well as his right hand," Flemming says, "because he was from a generation that got a beating if you used your left hand."

In other words, Schübell was naturally left-handed, but had acquired ambidexterity through negative reinforcement.

"Arnold Madsen was so impressed by his work," says Flemming (or Schübell's other son, Preben, it's not clear) "that he suggested that they form a partnership where Henry Schubell would design the furniture and produce the wooden frames which Arnold Madsen would then upholster and market." This was in 1944. Madsen must have been persuasive, because by 1945 or 1946 (accounts differ) Schübell had quit his job as foreman of Winter & Winding, and was now one half of Madsen & Schübell.

"I had my hands on my hips first--stop copying me."

The new firm started producing the Clam Chair, which sold well.

Another hit of theirs was the Oda chair, which used an unusual-for-the-time steel frame; Madsen "took a welding course and then spent weeks in the company factory working on the first prototype," Johha says. "The workers thought he had gone completely mad - but he did not stop until the frame was exactly as he had imagined it."

Their Prague chair, a sort of successor to the Clam chair, was another success.

Madsen & Schübell produced furniture throughout the 1940s, '50s and '60s out of their shop in Copenhagen, and also licensed the designs to manufacturers Vik & Blendheim in Norway and Bovenkamp in the Netherlands. The duo worked together until the mid-60s, then split to each set up firms with their own sons; the resultant ventures never reached the level of success of Madsen & Schübell.

Today Madsen & Schübell pieces are in high demand on vintage sites, but strangely, their names were apparently not well known during their original period of commercial success. Aaron FitzGerald, of London-based furniture restoration firm Dagmar Design, calls the Clam chair "one of the most sought-after and simultaneously misattributed and copied chair designs of the twentieth century;" for years the chair had been attributed to Norwegian retailer Martin Olsen and/or Danish architect Philip Arctander. Similarly, the Oda chair spent years being erroneously credited to Danish designer Nanna Ditzel.

An original Clam chair is particularly hard to come by. "We're no longer selling vintage ones in high numbers because the supply has more or less dried up," FitzGerald says, "and the ones that are left are incredibly expensive." FitzGerald eventually negotiated with Madsen's estate and has gained rights to reproduce it. They sell them here, and the asking price is about $8,400.

The Japanese art of flower arrangement, Ikebana, is a captivating practice that aims for poetic synthesis of human hand and natural beauty in each composition. Stickybana, as documented on this Instagram page, is a sub-genre that centers cannabis within that tradition.

The pairing is quite simpatico: Ikebana and cannabis practitioners alike explore space and time, seeking balance and harmony. The boundaries of the art though seem a bit blurry, and the concept not exactly focused: amongst the photos of cut arrangements there are examples of trained miniature plants, aka the entirely separate Japanese art of Bonsai, but here executed with weed, so, you know, like, Bongsai.

Given the adjacency of the account's creation to April 20th, 4/20 for us in the USA, a festive date on any stoner's calendar, this may just all be an illusion. But perhaps it truly is a perpetually forgotten art ...

See more at: @stickybana on Instagram

Here's what we looked at this week:

Startup Humane has debuted their Ai Pin, to damning reviews. The UI/UX design is just insane.

Form follows function: NASA's zero-gravity drinking cup, prototyped in space.

Some wonderful scans from "The Function of Colour in Factories Schools & Hospitals," a British book published in 1930.

DeWalt's Carbon Fiber Staple Gun weighs 50% less and can take a beating.

Whole lotta welding going on with architect/furniture designer Leif Jørgensen's LJ Spider Chair.

Form follows function: This no-tools-required hanging hook from the early 1900s.

The PSF1 is a stylish folding e-bike by Taiwanese manufacturer BESV.

Here's a bit of weirdness: A Japanese automotive supplier has successfully Kickstarted a titanium cutting board.

There are some unusual design details in this Hans J. Wegner sewing table.

Nendo's mesmerizing '50 Manga Chairs' animation, inspired by the visual representation of kinetic energy.

Porch piracy deterrent: A security camera that fires paintballs and tear gas. What could go wrong?

This one-legged desk design, from 1970s France, would make sense for a resource-poor environment.

From the "Walking Sticks & Canes" exhibit at the Triennale Milano, here are four experimental walking stick designs that seek to increase functionality.

Wera's Screw Gripper holds non-magnetic screws on the tip of your driver.

This Lee Bench, by experimental designer Marco Campardo, is a Nakashima-inspired walnut bench with unusual details.

Cloche, by industrial designer Guillaume Bloget, is a low-tech, designey food smoker.

Surprisingly this Tove Lounge Chair, a beautiful Mid-Century design by Madsen and Schübell, features a sprung reclining mechanism.

Boston Dynamics unveiled their new Atlas robot, which features some pretty inhuman movement capabilities.

Packaging design case study: Zenpack's sustainable solution for coffee pods.