The New Dutch Talent Whose Colorful Scale Models Caught Our Eye

If you clicked on this story thinking that the main image, above, was a chair, and that maybe — even if only in your internal fantasy world — you could somehow buy it for your house, bad news: It, and all of the covetable glass objects featured below, are tabletop-sized models created for research purposes by the newly graduated Rotterdam product designer Fleur Peters. Granted you can special order one if you have open shelf space, but Peters primarily intended them as studies for an as-yet-unrealized public seating installation in Rotterdam called The Light Conductors. “I want to use the sun as a source to create moments of wonder and wellbeing,” she says. “I enhance the effects of the sun, to show something that is not always noticed, but brings us moments of joy.”

For The Light Conductors, she began by researching traditional glass techniques and visiting glass artists in their ateliers. It was an important step in her design process to find out the limits and possibilities of glass before designing with it. “Glass is a material that is quite hard to work with,” she says. “It takes a lot of practice to get to know the material. It’s fragile and at the same time strong. You have to be careful and controlled when you work with it.” Once she understood her medium, she could start playing with it. 

The models shown here are made with different kinds of glass — some smooth and some dimpled — to test the effects of light seen through different textures. Most of it is antique mouth-blown glass which she cuts into geometric shapes before polishing the edges and glueing the pieces together using UV light. Peters tries not to think too much when assembling the structures, puzzling together the panels to create small shelters, corners or shelves. “When I try to make sketches I never stick to the plan,” she admits.

The potential for Peters’ glass structures is endless; a small one could become a vase while a much bigger one could be used as a colorful facade in architecture. But what wasted magic if they aren’t, at least for a few moments of the day, allowed to play in direct sunlight.
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