Laurids Gallée's 'Fever Dreams' furniture takes cues from marquetry and applied arts

Fever dreams, associated usually with vivid, bizarre, and sometimes uncomfortable dreams that people tend to experience when they fall asleep running a fever, is the name of Austrian designer Laurids Gallée’s ongoing furniture collection. “Decision-making in a project can be very hard, because sometimes I want to do everything, and this wanting to do everything is what I wanted to express through the title. Fever dreams, as we know, are super intense—they are like hallucinations, where nothing really makes sense. Reality does not really make sense. Everything feels a bit different. In this case, it refers to all the small drawings with very different styles that can be found on each of the pieces. They are stylistically vastly different, and they depict different things. This madness, where everything mixes on these pieces, was somehow synonymous with something like a fever dream,” shares the designer who resides in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

Made out of solid Douglas wood, the armchair, shelf, stool, side table, and coffee table that make up the product design collection are decorated with illustrations reminiscent of Renaissance murals, where colourful motifs etched in each section of the furniture connects with the next segment to build an illustrated narrative. On closer inspection, one can easily point out the floral patterns, the celestial elements, and the animal depictions portrayed throughout the surface of the furniture pieces. All these elements come together to build a lively, colourful, and fantastical ecosystem that has the potential of existing somewhere. Apart from serving as attractive symbols evocative of our natural landscapes, they also depict Gallée's fascination with picking up elements from different spaces and landscapes and arranging them to articulate open-ended stories.

Inspired by traditional marquetry, the furniture designer developed his own unique method of crafting objects, involving laser engraving drawings on the surface of the wood, and then, airbrushing or hand-painting them. These rectilinear squares, measuring 10 centimetres on each edge, present a grid system on which the designer then conceives drawings and illustrations. This grid system is also responsible for guiding the forms of the furniture pieces.

Gallée cites artistic influences in Austria and the Netherlands as guiding forces that shaped his style and method of working. While the designer’s experiences in Austria exposed him to unique wood works sculpted by hand as well as the tradition of reverse glass painting, his education in the Netherlands gave him the confidence to subvert design traditions and explore atypical design languages and artistic renditions. Other influences that have shaped his career as an artist and designer include the myriad experiments undertaken under applied arts. In deriving inspiration from traditional crafts and art, Gallée, although a designer, integrated the usage of his hand—much like a craftsperson—as an essential tool in all his design explorations and experiments.

Gallée primarily works with resin and wood. The two materials, different in their compositions and attributes, also require different processes of crafting. Hence, working with resin and wood takes two different directions for the product designer. In coming times, Gallée intends to work on larger installations, as well as sculptural objects.

Click on the banner video to watch the interview with Laurids Gallée.