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Magical, sublime and inspired by nature.
Katrin Olina has developed a personal, rich visual language that serves as a vivid interface between reality and the subconscious. In collaboration with Michael Young, she has designed the coat hanger Tree, which has become a true icon for Swedese.
Katrin Petursdottir, Michael Young
Katrin Olina Petursdottir, born in Iceland, is a designer and artist whose work has been commissioned, produced and published by the National Gallery in Oslo, Print Magazine, Die Gestalten Verlag, Rosenthal, Fornarina, Dupont Corian(R), and the Montreu
x Jazz Festival, among others. A graduate of product design at the E.S.D.I. in Paris, she worked for Philippe Starck's studio in Paris and Ross Lovegrove's studio in London, before joining the studio of her husband Michael Young in 1998. Since then, Petur
sdottir and Young have actively collaborated on high-profile design projects. Tree, a coat hanger for Swedese, is one of the best known products of this collaboration. Alongside such design work, Petursdottir has cultivated a provocative two-dimensional g
raphic language that lies between art, illustration and graphic design. The fantastical worlds it depicts are an imaginative expression of Petursdottir's own inner landscape, and this work has captured the attention of art and design clients alike. Among
her latest commissions is the poster for this year's Montreux Jazz Festival. She is the second woman to design a poster for the Festival after Niki de Saint Phalle in 1984. Petursdottir's versatile approach to creativity enables her work apply within the
fields of design, interior design, graphic design, textiles, fashion and art. Recently, she opened her own company, KatrinOlina Ltd, in Hong Kong, to accommodate her rapidly expanding client base.
Planes and trains are his offices, travelling a working method. British-born and Hong Kong-based Michael Young is an international star designer, driven by a passionate interest for technological evolution and mass industry. As well as a constant questioning of human typologies and habits ...
Born in 1966 in Sunderland, northern England, Michael Young studied Furniture and Product Design at Kingston University, London. In the mid-90s Terence Conran chose Michael as his favourite designer. Simultaneously that time’s so-influential magazine Wallpaper hailed his work, but Young fled from the cocktail-party circuit to Iceland, where the landscape helped him to focus.
Later he moved to Brussels and then Taipei. And finally to Hong Kong – where his company Michael Young Ltd is bold enough to claim that it designs icons rather than items. Like the exceptional easy chair Avalon for Swedese, a one-piece injection chair, created as an expressive nod to Verner Panton.
Swedese's ideals are the same today as they have been for the past seventy years. These are to create beautiful furniture for the future, which build on the foundations of Scandinavian modern traditions, designed by forward-looking designers who share in the timeless ideals of architecture.