TRUCK’s Pair of Prototypes

Alongside her new line of dishware and tabletop accessories for Studio Nova, TRUCK principal Jennifer Carpenter is showing two furniture prototypes. The first is a new interpretation of the traditional roll-top desk: a coffee table whose slatted surface moves back to reveal cubbyholes for quick-access storage. Typical roll-top desks were surprisingly low-tech, Carpenter explains: most were simply a piece of canvas with wooden slats glued to it. Her design uses bonded leather instead of canvas and wraps around the table edge in such a way that the backing, dyed lime green in this case, becomes visible.

The second prototype, a canvas and steel woven screen, was Carpenter’s solution to the problem of how to create designs of some intricacy that were “easily UPS-able,” as she puts it. (The New York-based TRUCK is largely a mail-order business.) Most complex designs require considerable on-site assembly, but this screen of woven canvas strips on a steel frame requires none. It folds up flat for shipping and can unfold without complication once taken out of the box.