5 materials
Chosen for how they age.
Nothing here is finished to look new forever. Oak darkens, steel patinas at the edges, and the aluminium picks up a satin from being handled. That is the intention.
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Aluminium
Spun, not pressed. Spinning leaves a slightly uneven wall and a surface that takes
powder coat evenly; pressing is cheaper and gives you a shape with no memory of how it
was made.
Used in Halo Pendant -
Oak
European oak from managed forests in Bavaria, air-dried for two years before it is
touched. Kiln-dried oak is faster and moves more in a heated room.
Used in Cairn Side Table, Column Stool -
Glass
Mould-blown in a family glassworks outside Prague. The wall thickness varies by a
millimetre or so across a piece, which is why the light behaves differently as you move.
Used in Prism Vase, Facet Carafe - Stoneware Fired to 1,260°C, which vitrifies the body properly. Below about 1,200°C you get something that looks the same and slowly absorbs cooking oil for the rest of its life.
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Steel
Bent from tube rather than cast or welded from sections, so there are no joints to
fail and nothing to align. It is harder to make and much harder to make badly.
Used in Arc Floor Lamp, Meridian Mirror
A note on the pictures
Everything here is drawn, not photographed.
Every object on this site is generated vector artwork built from flat geometry and two tones. Choosing a finish genuinely re-draws the object rather than tinting a photograph — which is why the swatches are honest about what the shape does, and vague about what the surface feels like.
- chalk
- ochre
- ink
- moss
- rust
- brass
Who makes it
Five workshops, all of which we have stood in.
The aluminium is spun in Rhode Island by a shop that has been doing it since the sixties and mostly makes parts for the marine industry. The glass comes from a family works outside Prague, running since 1946. The oak is turned in Bavaria, the stoneware thrown in Stoke, and the steel bent forty minutes from the Brooklyn studio.
We visit all five at least once a year, which is a slower and more expensive way to run a supply chain than the alternative, and the reason production runs are 200 pieces rather than 2,000.
Forma is a fictional brand. These workshops do not exist — the copy is written to demonstrate how a real maker's site would carry this kind of detail.