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New Brand Alert: Montreal’s Claste

The Canadian furniture studio released their inaugural collection, called Tension, at this year’s ICFF in New York

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Text by Rab Messina

How can one define Tension, the first collection from Montreal newcomers Claste? Basically as a game of tension between technical craftsmanship and artistry, glass and stone, lightness and sturdiness, fragility and stability.

At this year’s International Contemporary Furniture Fair in New York, the studio presented a range of objects from their minimal line, made with only three materials: glass, pink onyx and bianco quartzite.

Here’s where technical craftsmanship meets artistry: in order to create these timeless pieces, a sheet of tempered glass is laminated between two layers of onyx, and the suspended plane is then glued to the face of the glass panels, without the use of any mechanical fasteners nor a visible support system, in order to allow it to cure. “We are fairly certain that this process of adhering stone to glass is the first time anyone has ever used this procedure,” said founders Philip Hazan, Quinlan Osborne and Martin Poitras.

Two thirds of the founding trio have an architecture background, and this certainly informs the design. The result is a collection that has produced the furniture version of a glass bridge: with eight physically puzzling pieces such as To Float from Grace, a console made of glass and bianco quartzite, to a surprisingly sturdy three-legged chair called And Here I Sit, Claste’s Tension surely lives up to its name.

And Here I Sit, a hall chair in bianco quartzite
And Here I Sit, a hall chair in bianco quartzite
And So I Stand, a pedestal console in bianco quartzite
And So I Stand, a pedestal console in bianco quartzite
How Fragile This Love, a lounge chair in clear glass and pink onyx
How Fragile This Love, a lounge chair in clear glass and pink onyx
Where We First Met, a bench in glass and onyx
Where We First Met, a bench in glass and onyx
Heart of Gold, a table lamp in pale green onyx
Heart of Gold, a table lamp in pale green onyx
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