London Design Festival 2016: Polish designer Olga Bielawska has used slices of marble to create the illusion of a table draped in striped silk (+ slideshow).
Commissioned by London gallery Matter of Stuff for its Curated by MOS exhibition, the Veiled side tables appear to be covered in folded fabric.
The visual illusion is created by combining pieces of black and white marble to create the surface of the furniture.
Bielawska worked with craftspeople at the Carrara Design Factory in Italy to create the pieces, using waterjet cutting to precisely form each piece of the pattern.
"I chose this method because it could be very precise," she added. "I wanted something graphical and that's why I chose black and white, but it could also be made in different colour variations."
Both pieces of furniture – one with a circular tabletop and the other oblong – are supported by marble columns.
The designer based the tables on ancient Roman statuary, as well as a marble bust known as the Veiled Virgin, which shows a woman whose face is draped in realistic-looking material.
"It's incredible because she has a textile over her face and it looks so real," the designer told Dezeen. "I wanted to create something that looks soft in one way, but with this hard material, so I came up with the idea of trying to make it two-dimensional."
The pieces were shown at Matter of Stuff's Curated by MOS exhibition, held at the ME London Hotel from 17 to 25 September 2016 as part of the London Design Festival.
Matter of Stuff picked three up-and-coming designers to develop pieces in marble and three in metal for the exhibition. The designers were asked to create cutting-edge works by collaborating with Italian manufacturers.
The other designers involved in the exhibition were Alessandro Zambelli, Nina Cho, Tim Vanlier, Tomas Libertiny and Studio Uufie.
Furniture launched during the nine-day festival includes Samuel Wilkinson's minimal steam-bent wood chair and Another Country's collection inspired by early 20th-century designer Gerrit Rietveld.