Swedish design student Annika Göransson has created a sofa inspired by an oyster shell and using traditional upholstery techniques.

Called Ostrea, the seating is sculpted from styrofoam and covered with hand-stitched wool.

A flexible section on one side is marked by orange stitching.

Göransson designed the sofa while studying at the Danish Design School for an upholstery competition organised by the Upholstery Guild in Copenhagen, in which she won first place.

Here's some more information from Göransson:

My name is Annika Göransson, I am Swedish, 26 years old and I live in Copenhagen. I study my second year at the Danish Design School with focus on furniture- and industrial design. I strive to create products that are both physically and visually interesting and raises curiosity. Experimenting with contrasts is also an important part of my work.

I recently won the Upholstery competition initiated by the Upholstery Guild in Copenhagen in cooperation with the Danish Design School.
After the award ceremony in the City Hall the furniture were exhibited at the Danish Museum of Art and Design. At the moment the winning sofa "Ostrea" is exhibited together with the other pieces at Skagen Odde Naturcenter in Skagen, Denmark, until the end of August.

The Upholstery Guild celebrates its 550 years anniversary this year and wanted to draw attention to the fact that traditional craftsmanship,
through industrialization, is moving further and further away from our part of the world. The task was to design the future upholstery furniture with inspiration from the old tradition.

Six out of twenty-five contestants qualified from the first judgement and the finalists created a full-scale prototype of their furniture,
in collaboration with a furniture upholsterer. My sofa is named Ostrea and is a two-seats furniture for the public space.

I was inspired by the 19th century’s bombastic divans and armchairs, which were richly decorated with tassels, fringes and drapes.
I converted the ornaments into structures and I translated the bombastic shapes into a flowing, organic form.

I was also inspired by the oyster’s structure and colours and worked with the contrast between rough and smooth, light and dark.

The base of the sofa is sculptured out in dense styrofoam. The sofa is covered partly with cold foam for comfort and the woollen fabrics are glued on and sewn together by hand. The orange thread defines the flexible part of the sofa and is also hand sewn.

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