Karin Sällström, Stereo furniture (FURNITURE 2025)

Photos:

Karin Sällström

Video tour:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/10NKaNOmMr7fpW7TQ2WmhQncunq4nwVNZ/view?usp=share_link

Country

Sweden

My idea of this furniture started with my need for a beautiful stereo furniture to all our vintage amplifiers. I wanted to build a beautiful furniture that was like an art piece by it self but also with a function that fronted the receiver’s and hid all the cables and at the same time functionally is high enough to not have to bend down to change the vinyl record. I love furniture with shapes that gives a ”wow” impression and that combines different geometrical shapes in its structure but also organic and curly, swirly patterns in the wood. A functional piece of furniture and a work of art. I think that the furniture I build should be imbued with the idea of ​​both being my own works of art and at the same time being able to be used for something practical. Functionality The hight of the furniture is designed so you don’t have to bend over when changing your LP records and adjust the controls on the amplifiers. Commonly, stereo furnitures are mainly too low to use comfortably, and I wanted to build one with a better function. When you have a lot of receivers in the same furniture, you end up with cable tangle that are not beautiful to look at. Therefor I have made a section where one can hide them and collect them to a extension cord hidden inside the furniture, and from there you can choose between four holes where to lead only one cable out to a wall outlet. In the future I will probably make holes in the top top board as well, for the cables from the speakers and turntable. The door in the middle (on the back of the furniture) are hold in place with magnets, in that way none of the doors are in your way when placing all the cables. The furniture hides the cables from all sides thanks to the doors on the back. This makes it possible to place the furniture in the middle of the room. Reuse and environment I also wanted to use materials that often are rated by the wood industri - for example wooden blanks that are time wasters in the industrial process - such as birch and sallow with swirls or rot. My opinion is that such wood often are very beautiful and interesting. 
In this furniture all the heat-treated beech was waste for another company due to twisted wood, so I made my own glulam boards out of it, then I could use and process all the wooden blanks in different size. The top boars with it’s lovely birch has beautiful swirls and some rotten areas in amazing colors and has a red tone in the wood. The birch wood comes from an private person, that has his own saw and he saw wood from the local area and only one tree from here and there not making deep marks in the located ecosystem. The sallow in legs of the furniture I also bought from a privat person in my area, it came from his fathers own garden a very long time ago. I prefer to buy wood from people who saw themselves and use wood that does not come from a huge clear-cutting operation, I then know that the trees have been growing in natural areas that have not been mass-cut. 
The rotten that i use comes from a company in my country that weave it themselves to provide real high quality and only in small amount so it is fresh when one uses it and it will last much longer in the furniture. When I buy from them I also know that the employees have good working conditions. The brass that lift the top board is from a brass pipe that had been standing in an office at a metal business for 15 years and not being used to anything. The brass handels on the hatches are made out of residual product from an other furniture piece I built. I always save stuff that I think I can be useful for something else that I build.

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