Polish designer Olga Bielawska creates a silky illusion in marble

Take a look at Polish designer Olga Bielawska’s visual illusion – tables that look like they’re draped in striped silk.

Commissioned by London-based gallery Matter of Stuff for its Curated by MOS exhibition, held as part of the London Design Festival, the tables appear to be veiled in fabric. The surface of the tables is made up of pieces of black and white marble, which constructs the visual illusion of striped material.

Bielawska collaborated with the Carrara Design Factory in Italy to create the tables, using waterjet cutting to ensure precision.

“I chose this method because it could be very precise,” says the designer. “I wanted something graphical and that’s why I chose black and white, but it could also be made in different colour variations.”

Bielawska took her inspiration from ancient Roman statues as well as The Veiled Virgin, a Carrara marble statue carved in Rome by Italian sculptor Giovanni Strazza, which depicts the bust of Blessed Virgin Mary veiled in realistic-looking material.

“It’s incredible because she has a textile over her face and it looks so real,” Bielawska 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.”

Source: Dezeen