It’s not every day that Lalese Stamps works with wood, foam, and fabric. After all, the ceramist, founder of her own studio Lolly Lolly Ceramics, usually works with water and clay, but as it turned out, her neighbor down the hall had an interesting proposal for her.
While working out of The Fort, a late 1800s, 240,000-square-foot manufacturing plant that belongs to Fortner Custom Furniture & Upholstery, Stamps would often visit the Fortner workshop. When the Fortner team was looking for an artist from outside the furniture industry to collaborate with, the decision was a no-brainer. Stamps, just as excited, said yes. “Once I started to be able to see…what I can make by hand, like a small piece, I started to imagine bigger pieces and…the way that people interact with furniture has always been really fascinating to me,” the ceramist shares.
Like many determined creatives before her, Stamps had previously completed a 100 Day Project, where she committed to creating a mug every day for 100 days. When it came time to pick one of those mugs and bring it to a larger scale, Mark Cryer, Commercial Sales Manager at Fortner, and Stamps agreed that mug 53/100 was the winning design.
Stamps, Cryer, and the production team at Fortner were able to bring a pair of chairs to life based on a ceramic mug with three arches forming the handle. In the translation from clay to foam, the arches become the backrest and arms of the chair. From a bird’s eye view, the three arches are clearly represented.
To learn more about the Fortner x Lolly Lolly collaboration, head to fortnerinc.com.
