Angora is like pixie dust to Elizabeth Beer and Brian Janusiak. The founders of Various Projects, a multi-disciplinary New York design studio, they’ve used the fiber to swathe everything from rocks and bricks to their young daughter. In the process, they turn the traditional look and feel of familiar objects into something else entirely. “It’s like magic,” Janusiak says. “It transforms everything so completely and the reaction to it is always pure delight and happiness.”

In 2009 the couple opened Project No.8, a retail space with an experimental edge (their second store in the city's Ace Hotel has the same name). At the original Chinatown location, pigeons knit from alpaca wool sit alongside oversized hardcover books, stylish lambswool capes, and most recently, a limited edition series of angora-covered, iconically angular Cappellini chairs originally designed by minimalist master A.G. Fronzoni in 1964. The fuzzy versions are made to order and available in six colors. Though the pair had played with the capabilities of the fiber before, it was the late designer Tobias Wong who inspired this particular project. “Tobi loved that [the chair] is such a simple and beautiful realization of form,” Janusiak says. He and Beer spoke to Surface via email about their latest collaboration.

How did your working relationship with Tobias Wong develop?
When he initially approached us about doing something together, we showed him the Child Cover that we made for our then-eight-year-old daughter, who we turned into a head-to-toe soft-focus silhouette. We eventually collaborated on a Kid Robot exhibition with the same angora process and all loved the result, then started discussing the idea of doing the same thing with the Fronzoni chair. We didn’t have a chance to finish it while Tobi was alive. Some time after, Frederick McSwain [of Soho’s Cappellini showroom] was putting together an exhibition in honor of Tobi, and he asked us if we could team up to realize this idea that Tobi had wanted to do.

Various Projects’s Brick and Rock are incredibly straightforward items. The Fronzoni series can be seen in the same spirit. What draws you to these basic shapes?
For the Rock and Brick, it was about the form, but also the weight. The angora makes them appear light, ethereal, and animated, but when you hold them, they're both soft and heavy. It’s a pleasant surprise, and the contrast is very satisfying. We like how the chair’s crisp, no-nonsense lines are blurred by the angora. We also like the concept of making clear things a little fuzzy. The process of using this material the way we do adds a little humor to everything.

The angora-wrapped Rock and Brick by Various Projects.

What freedoms are offered by creating limited-edition series that aren’t available in more standard collections? Are you able to take more creative liberties?
When the process is so incredibly labor intensive, producing fewer items makes things possible that wouldn’t be if we were trying to make 5,000 of them. It’s all hand work, so there’s an infinite flexibility of sorts—something can be tailored perfectly and imperfectly at the same time—to a unique end result. 

You’ve said before that the idea of digression is important to both Various Projects and Project No. 8, allowing designers to create outside their chosen field. How does this impact both the process and the results?
Digression is an essential part of creating. It’s like hiking—every path that opens up in front of you is a viable one until it’s not, and then you find another or retrace your steps. It's a way of seeing more of the mountain.

Various Projects
Cappellini
Frederick McSwain