The latest collection launched by the Danish brand Hay - among the companies that have redefined the aesthetics of contemporary Nordic design - bears the signature of British product designer Jasper Morrison, who has already designed a table clock and a wall clock for the company, and perfectly interprets this dialogue with the outdoors typical of Scandinavian thinking.
"Outdoor Market" has 35 objects and furnishings, made mainly of wood, fabric, and steel. Folding chairs and tables, tarps and towels, picnic bags and accessories, outdoor cooking utensils, to small objects such as clothespins, bottle openers or containers: a constellation of everyday tools designed to accompany informal moments in the open air. The idea is reminiscent of that of a small temporary marketplace - hence the name of the collection - where lightweight, foldable and easily transportable objects make it possible to set up a habitable space anywhere. Designed not only for domestic terraces and gardens, but also for out-of-town trips, camping, picnics and vacations on the road, the collection imagines not only the space of the home as habitable.
The products include folding chairs and tables, a hammock, a small canopy structure that functions as a portable gazebo, as well as a range of barbecue utensils-such as fish grills, tongs, and skewers-along with stainless steel tableware and accessories designed to be durable, lightweight, and easily transportable.
The idea is reminiscent of a small temporary marketplace where lightweight, collapsible and easily transportable objects make it possible to set up a habitable space anywhere.
Presented at the MoMA Design Store in New York-where Morrison is at home with several products that have entered the museum's permanent collection over the years-the series is presented as a tribute to the outdoors, aiming to elevate the outdoor living experience through a coherent range of essential objects.
In perfect continuity with the designer's work, the products are stripped of the superfluous, immediate and intuitive. They almost seem like new archetypes-and in design this is almost always a good sign. Morrison has often described these kinds of objects with the expression "super normal objects": products so essential that they become almost invisible, able to integrate naturally into daily life without imposing themselves as protagonists.
The work on the objects comes naturally, continuing research that Morrison had already begun independently by producing, for his Jasper Morrison Shop in London, some of the metal tools that now enter the Hay catalog.
In the furniture-a sphere equally familiar to the designer-among textile stripes, natural wood, transformability, and technical details deliberately left exposed, some will recognize the echo of the masterful work that Vico Magistretti created for the Italian company Campeggi: a design capable of being at once essential, ingenious, and surprisingly domestic, even when it was born to be outdoors.