Dezeen's favourite furniture and lighting from May

A coffee table that doubles as a board game and a riff on a psychotherapist’s couch are among the playful pieces featured in this roundup of furniture and lighting, spotted by Dezeen’s design and interiors reporter Jane Englefield over the past month.

Sheep Inc chair by James Shaw

When London clothing brand Sheep Inc asked local designer James Shaw to create some furniture for its Soho store, he chose to work with timber from a plane tree that grew on Camden Road just a few miles away.

Alongside a bench, Shaw conceived a strikingly chunky chair with a rough-hewn back that reveals all the intricacies of the timber.

Patterned by a beautifully swirly grain, the seating is a smart example of how designers can, and should, take advantage of the materials on their doorstep.

“London plane is a tree I find particularly interesting, as a species that has adapted to thrive in polluted cities,” Shaw told Dezeen. “As a hybrid of different species from around the world, it is in some ways a metaphor for London itself.”

A4 Lamp by Andu Masebo

This lamp is made from three pieces of galvanised sheet steel that can fit inside an A4-sized envelope.

London designer Andu Masebo crafted the lighting by rolling and folding the metal by hand to create a delightfully reflective object held together with neat incisions.

Masebo showed the lamp in the debut exhibition presented by Unit.d, a new design gallery in Haggerston that was founded to offer well-made everyday objects at affordable prices.

Super Ego GT by EJR Barnes

Self-taught London creative EJR Barnes has made a name for himself with furniture design that is rooted in a dry sense of humour.

Currently on display at Paris’s GSL Gallery in an exhibition of other pieces that explore the idea of “design classics”, Suger Ego GT is a chaise longue that Barnes created as a riff on a psychotherapist’s couch.

A curved, polished aluminium seat is supported by a narrow walnut-clad body, referencing early 20th-century ice boat hulls. The structure stands on a pair of carved marble feet and was topped with green leather cushioning, in a nod to the upholstered seats of a Citroën SM.

Barnes has long been intrigued by vehicle design and how its recognisable shapes and materials have infiltrated the creative industries. His chaise longue is an attempt to subtly poke fun at the “ego” so often attached to the world of cars.

The Rhine by Night by Ralph Parks

Also based in London, designer Ralph Parks described the relief carved into his latest standing cabinet as “reminiscent of something fossilised, aged under water, or smoothed by human contact over many decades”.

Parks crafted the furniture from thick ash boards, which were painstakingly carved and burnt to produce a silky, rippled finish.

Using a combination of different angle grinder attachments, the designer transformed a blocky mass of wood into the intricate cabinet as an artist would chip away at a sculpture. The result is a hard-won piece of craftsmanship that shines.

Lollipop by Deadgood

Debuted at this month’s Clerkenwell Design Week in London, Lollipop is a chair that does what it says on the tin.

British brand Deadgood set out to reference the humble wooden lollipop stick, crafting the seating from rounded pieces of ultra-light pressed plywood that inspire a distinctly summery feeling.

Despite the thinness of the timber, the brand says the chair is rock-solid thanks to its refined dowelling, creating a piece of furniture that’s both visually fun and nice and reliable.

Quoridor coffee table by Vasco Fragoso Mendes

The last few years have seen a quietly growing trend for tables that double as board games, artfully shown in projects including Charlotte Taylor’s dining table-cum-chess-set at last year’s 3 Days of Design in Copenhagen.

Portuguese woodworker Vasco Fragoso Mendes has applied the idea to a coffee table, which can serve as a board for the game Quoridor. The two-pawn game is simple: reach the other side of the board before your opponent does, avoiding their traps laid with “fences” along the way.

Currently on show at Lisbon Design Week, the table instantly draws you in not only for its interactive element, but also its sleek and gridded mahogany top. The game’s “fences” were made out of timber offcuts from Fragoso Mendes’s studio, to give the wooden waste a new life.

The only downside to the furniture? “It’s not the easiest thing to clean,” the designer told Dezeen during a tense match.

Latex lamp by Jabez Bartlett

British production-turned-furniture designer Jabez Bartlett was one of Milan design week’s breakout stars, thanks to his deliciously bloated inflatable coffee table and lighting.

Bartlett’s latest creation is a spiky metal floor lamp, characterised by a stretchy layer of latex that was pulled over the frame by hand to provide a taught lampshade –”kind of the opposite” of his plump inflatable lighting.

“I was also inspired by old medieval chandeliers, the cast iron ones with candles,” the designer told Dezeen.

“It’s something about how savage the raw metal is, in turn softened by untreated latex. It feels like both ancient and modern ideas coming together.”

The lamp is currently on display as part of the Studio Iron exhibition at Saatchi Yates in London, which runs until 14 June.

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