Jonas Forsman's Stam Side Table for Fredrik Folke

The project was initiated by SPOK Jönköping in collaboration with Fredrik Folke.

Three of us designers were given the chance to start from a felled pine from Fredrik’s forest and create a piece of furniture of our choice. The other designers were Mikaela Falk, who made a cabinet, and Rebecka Franzén, who made a lamp.

I have always been drawn to following the material from start to finish. As a child, I often followed that principle, even though I didn’t reflect on it at the time. The pine’s bark was whittled into a boat, became an expedition down the stream, and then disappeared. The circle closed. By finding the material right on the doorstep and the craftsmanship in the barn next door, the circle becomes smaller. It is close and simple. The project has made me rediscover a way of working with form and furniture that feels very original and genuine.

Felling a 100-year-old pine comes with a certain responsibility. That timber has to become something useful, beautiful, and long-lasting. For me, that set the tone for the project and the piece of furniture we developed: a table that can be used in different ways. Able to move with the shifts of time. Moved to new places. Perhaps sanded down or repainted. A pine piece that withstands wear, both from use and from trends.

When I turned in at Fredrik Folke’s place in Eckersholm to develop the prototype, everything felt easy and unforced. An environment where calm settles in and creativity comes forward. We could find solutions and make decisions that felt completely natural, from the perspective of the furniture and the material.

My Stam side table brings the calm of the forest into my home. The small table has storage space under the top. When the small table is pushed in under the large one, the storage is also concealed, giving a sense of calm for the eye and the mind. In its starting position, the two tables form a whole with a trunk-shaped base. The vertical gaps where the parts meet create interest and hint that the table has additional functions. Like the trunks of trees, there is also a curvature here that leads the eye around and interacts with the soft rounding of the tabletop. When the tables are separated, the interplay instead becomes one between the shapes of the tabletops, inviting change.