Horn Stool
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Bed of Nails
I have always had both an intense interest in the way people used to live, and a fascination for exploring new and unqiue materials. The revival in horn as a material vitalized this project.
Featured in
Magazine
Community Design Spotlight
Feb 2025
The Horn stool is a quirky, unexpected design that provides a luxurious conversation piece.
This project explores the nature of discomfort. The bed of nails is sharpened to provide an acute sensation to the user, but to disappear in a few seconds, helping us to understand and explore the purpose of pain and self-improvement, while promoting an ascetic lifestyle.​
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The horn stool is an exercise in artistic design that navigates emotional appraisal theory; the idea that a stimulus such as pain can be received as pleasurable if it is appraised as healthy or necessary, or even if its ephemerality is realized in the user. Not everybody who sits on the horn stool has negative feelings about it, but rather are intrigued by the experience, even if it is no less painful than the experiences of others.
History
This project focused on rediscovering an ancient material used by cultures all over the world for spoons, cups, bowls, combs, and decoration.
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Horn is a thermoforming material which sets as it cools. It is extremely similar to plastic, wile made of completely natural, biodegradeable material.
Process
The creation process was an intense learning experience reliant on product archaeology and analysis of former building techniques with the help of antiques website photo galleries.
Old-fashioned wooden flanges were fashioned to attach the horns to the stool, attached themselves with brass screws tarnished in acetone fumes to maintain an aged appearance.
