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Before Icelandic designer Katrin Olina established her own studio in Reykjavik, she worked for Philippe Starck in Paris and Ross Lovegrove in London. Though she studied industrial design at ESDI in Paris, Olina’s work runs the gamut from illustration, graphic design, fashion, interiors, print and animation. She’s collaborated with companies like Dupont Corian and 3M, porcelain manufacturer Rosenthal and the furniture manufacturer Swedese. Meanwhile, she creates smaller scale narrative driven work like Eulespiegel, an animation “featuring otherworldly landscapes and imaginary creatures.”
Lately her efforts have been focused on furniture. She has a brand new collection of tubular bent steel pieces called Friends of Steel. Unlike Mies Van Der Rohe’s thin, silver-colored steel chairs, Olina’s Puffastool, Black Lady table, Mirror and Black Box cabinet are based on frames made from thick black bent steel. Apparently, the inspiration for the collection came from Miklimeir The Magician, Olina’s large, digitally printed rug that depicts a narrative – her take on the tradition of using rugs or carpets to tell stories. The collection is so new, in fact, that there aren’t even any images of it available to publish online (Wallpaper ran a small picture in their July 2012 Design Directory), but you can get a sense of her high-tech-meets-handmade aesthetic by browsing the online shop, where you can buy Miklimeir or one of her more affordable silkscreened prints.
