In a back corner of the studio, a clothes rack that once served as a store fixture for the now-defunct Swedish clothing brand Blank sits alongside a chair with an interesting backstory. “We made it for the Swedish company that bought the patent for Masonite,” says Nobel. “That material is from the ’30s and was very connected to the early social Democratic welfare-state architecture in Sweden. The government made a lot of furniture and houses in Masonite. In 2005 the company had their 60th anniversary and asked us to do a series as a promotion, so we made this chair. It’s a very interesting material — it’s actually made without any glue, so it’s really ecological. But unfortunately the factory in Sweden since went bankrupt because of new materials that people think are better, even though this is just as good as MDF.”