Dutch design studio Tjep unveiled its latest body of work—Bronze Age—in the ballroom of the Colloredo Mansfeld Palace during Designblok Prague, which took place last week.
An exquisite collection of furniture pieces handcrafted out of bronze, Bronze Age stems from the studio's 2011 Recession Chair—a mass-produced Ikea chair reduced in part to a skeletal shape to evoke the receding state of the global economy.
“For this project I wanted to create something totally opposite to the technology driven trends based on the emergence of new digital tools such as 3D printing. I like the idea that bronze is precious and is therefor implicitly sustainable," says Frank Tjepkema, lead designer and founder of Tjep. "It is either preserved or remelted but never discarded; who knows, maybe these pieces contain a couple of remelted ancient bronze swords!”