Whether it's an elephant-inspired chair or a supersonic-nosed rocking horse, Valencia-based artist and designer Jaime Hayon creates characterful work that defies easy categorisation. Friends of Friends visited his studio on the occasion of the Elefy chair, his new design for Danish company &Tradition.
Filmed across his studio and sketchbooks, the portrait captures Hayon's process: drawing daily, working between fine art and functional design, and his belief that good storytelling is what gives an object its emotional charge.
Creativity always has to be something unexpected.
Produced for &Tradition on the occasion of The Preview at Salone del Mobile, Milan 2019, this studio portrait introduces the Elefy chair: an elephant-inspired design three years and 25 prototypes in the making, built to be both affordable in plastic and elevated in leather.
Friends of Friends filmed Hayon in his Valencia studio, moving between his sketchbooks, his ceramics practice, and the finished chair itself.