When the time has come for a bedtime story, don’t go to bed, just seat down near the fireplace, Jo Blackman will tell you the story of a special double chair. It’s a simple trick, just seat a parent and his child nearby and you will get the full picture of a united family along the old principle of storytelling.
Jo Blackman is a young designer who recently graduated in Three Dimensional Design at Brighton University where she started designing products linked with childhood anxieties in their development. After reading some reports about the widespread loss of interest for literature among young children she decided to react. It is not easy to make a wish and even harder to realize it, but with some imagination, Jo Blackman turned a fiction into reality. At first sight, it looks like a simple chair but it’s more than that. It’s a single double chair, as Miss Blackman says “the child’s chair has sprouted from the original also swivels so they can move closer together and provides an interactive element for the children to enjoy and connect with.” The chair, made of olive ash wood, can be obtained on its own or on a bigger scale as it was quickly outsourced. “This project was originally designed in collaboration with Brighton Jubilee Library and serves to provide a suitable parental reading chair for the library”, said Jo Blackman, who has no intention to stop there. In her hunt against childhood anxieties she feared that children could still have nightmares. That’s how she made up the “What Goes Bump in the Night” bedside table. As simple ideas are always the best, just open the drawer and let the light come, or as Jo Blackman would say: “The child opens a drawer at night and an illuminated playing surface is revealed, as they are playing, the scenes are projected up onto the ceiling”. This product is not only clever, it’s cute, refined, and has a unique design style with its legs turned by hand, finished in Danish oil, and a drawer made from ash wood. Everyone of us will be anxious not to be a child again, when we open our eyes on Jo Blackman’s work and realize it’s not a dream.
The prophecy was right; sometimes dreams really do come true.
So when the night comes, don’t be afraid by childish anxieties, just close your eyes and let Jo Blackman tell you a story, she may well wake you up in the middle of the night with some lovely light.
Don’t turn it off; this light could be your most beautiful night.
You can find more information about Jo Blackman and her work on: www.joblackman.com
written by Nadia Bacha
