For my final year project, in 2020, I collaborated with the Paillettes collective, a group of three Parisian drag queens who read fairy tales to children every month at the Parisian venue La Gaîté Lyrique.
The early steps:
When I attended one of the Paillettes collective’s “Drag-Queen Story Time” workshops for the first time on June 22nd, 2019, I discovered a novel way to share stories and teach children about embracing other's differences.
On September 2019, I interviewed la Déliche, one of the performers and member of the collective, and she agreed to collaborate with me on an project that would benefit the collective’s workshops. This collaboration led to a unique piece of furniture: a chest to transport, play, imagine and dream
In mid-October 2019, I submitted my project to a jury. They validated it and I started to draw the first sketches. That month, I visited the Gaîté Lyrique media library, the place where the story times take place, so I could immerse myself in their creative environment. There, I began to imagine a piece of furniture shaped as a classic round top trunk.
I designed Matriochka, a piece composed of three elements: a “Theatre” module to store props and display illustrations, three seating modules, and a library module to carry books. This last module is wrapped in a grey curtain-like fabric, but lined with glitter on the inside to surprise and delight the audience. When the Paillettes arrive in front of the audience, the “curtains” of the module are closed. When they’re ready to pick a book, the curtain opening shows the glitter inside and lets the children and parents know that reading time is about to start.
Prototyping
This step help me test and validate this piece of furniture's principles. My prototyping consisted in 3D printing, shaping and gluing cardboard and various experimentations.
Experimenting and playing around with the seating modules (pictured here Zacharie DULUC and Juliette EUGENIE).
Experimenting with steam and kerf bending.
Experimenting on wood bending, (from left to right), bending with kerfs + 0.6mm veneer on the exterior and interior, steam bending, bending with kerfs + 2mm veneer on the exterior and interior, bending using stacked 2mm veneer.
Materials
Following this experimentation, I based my choices on aesthetics, strength, time and price factors.
The materials I chose were oak veneer, in two thicknesses (2mm and 0.6mm); hardwood oak; wavy sycomore veneer (0.6 mm); black tinted sycomore veneer (0.6 mm); red tinted sycomore veneer (0.6 mm); and glittery fabric. These color tones are inspired from the inside of a theater to emphasize the theatrical aspect of these reading sessions.
The other materials are used for the frame and the moving parts : there’s cork (material used as the center plies in the curved parts), poplar plywood, teflon to replace traditional wheels and drag Matriochka.
3D Renders, Plans, Blueprints, Exploded view
Above, examples of how to use the illustrations.
Working in collaboration with the Paillettes collective made for an exciting and rich project. Even though we could not complete the collaboration due to the lockdown, I learnt a lot from my last year of woodworking and design school.
