Recreate

Suitcase Chair by Katie Thompson

By Alicita Rodriguez on Friday, January 15th, 2010

from http://3rings.designerpages.com/2010/01/15/suitcase-chair-by-katie-thompson/#axzz0dnhZcQIb

South African designer Katie Thompson is a woman after my own heart. I was taken with her the moment I read her website’s anonymous epigram: “It is more comfortable to be mad and know it than to be sane and have one’s doubts.” She may have a screw loose—if that’s what we’re to take from this quotation—but the condition works for her. Thompson began her furniture, interior design, and consulting firm Recreate after graduating from Design Time School of Interior Design in Cape Town. Creator of Extra Ordinary Recycled Furniture, Thompson admits she’s a “hoarder of all things useless, impractical, broken, colourful and shiny” (which is more than I can say for my mother-in-law, who has the same condition without acknowledging it—how many jars of buttons does one actually need?). Thankfully, Thompson’s designs takes the old in a new direction, showing “tell tale signs of her Dadaist leanings.”

An old suitcase stirs up the wanderlust in all of us and retains a nostalgic power as if it were a talisman—hence, its prominence in recent designs of note (see A Pile of Suitcases). Recently featured in the December 2009 issue of House & Leisure, Recreate’s Suitcase Chair stuffs a classic tufted chair inside a beaten up old Samsonite shell. Upholstered in 100% white linen, Suitcase Chair sits on whitewashed timber turned legs. If you have doubts about its sturdiness, cast away your fears: the internal structure is reinforced steel. The piece indeed brings together “South African craftsmanship with high end finishes and her own eclectic perfectionist flair.” I have the perfect candidate for Thompson’s Suitcase Chair: a friend of mine who is haunted by a recurring dream in which she lives in a cult where everyone sleeps in suitcases.

Alicita Rodriguez is a freelance writer obsessed with uncanny architecture and strange spaces. She comes from a family of obsessive compulsive contractors. Originally from Miami, she is now being held in a ghost town in Colorado against her will.

Comment by jackie starr January 17th, 2010 This is the “mother-in-law” responding to allegations of hoarding. Aside from three jars of buttons (purchased to be part of my card-making and the subject of a good piece on my blog), my hoarding consists of books (look who’s talking Alicita) and my pantry in Denver, which currently suffers from the aroma of a spilled “Airwick” room deodorizer some two years back and has yet to be cleaned out because I’ve been away for a year and a half. Oh well, I still loved the review.