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Thin candles: delicate elegance that surprises
by Pia Seidel
Weirdcore 2025: this year’s strangest design picks
10/12/2025
Translation: Katherine Martin
Pictures: Pia Seidel
Weirdcore is a celebration of the bizarre and unusual – an aesthetic inspired by surreal images and digital worlds. The look has even gained ground in the art and design space, breathing a touch of magic into our day-to-day lives.
If you ask me, home accessories and furniture classed as weirdcore are strange in the best kind of way. Why? Because they represent creative freedom and the courage to be different. Furniture expos held in Milan, Paris and Copenhagen in 2025 demonstrate how exciting it is to break with convention and explore new avenues.
Ranging from sex toy-style marble vases to soap-bubble-look furniture, these pieces break all the rules – and show how much fun the unconventional can be. They skilfully move between art and functionality, create visual tension and often have a playful or provocative component that makes you smile.
Soap bubble furniture
Berlin-based artist Henry Baumann leaves design to the forces of chance. According to the Movimento Gallery that represents Baumann, the organic shapes you can see in his resin-bubble Boo collection are a result of external influences rather than strategy.
Baumann intuitively transforms seemingly worthless materials such as empty tubs of strawberries, cable drums and resin into unique objects. Rather than using sketches, he allows himself to be inspired by the materials’ properties. If something goes pear-shaped along the way, he sees it as an opportunity to develop new ideas and discover beauty in things that have been thrown away.
Softening the concrete look
The Broken Bench may look like a heavy concrete block, but it’s actually made of soft polyurethane, a material the Italian company Gufram has made iconic. The design plays with contrasts, juxtaposing a raw, industrial vibe with unexpected softness.
The bench looks like a missing shard of Broken Mirror, a piece featured in Gufram’s Broken collection. Both designs resulted from a collaboration between the company and the New York studio Snarkitecture. Each piece is finished by hand, making each one slightly different.
Glasses with character
French artist Elise Fouin transforms trash – specifically glass waste – into treasure. Her new series «Tasses» is based on the remnants of the Needles vase, which is made from recycled Murano glass. As Fouin puts it, it’s «created using leftovers – and the leftovers of leftovers!»
Given how much the cup handles resemble the elegant lines of a cityscape or mountain range, you’d barely recognise them as handles. Created in collaboration with master glassmaker Vincent Breed and the «Verrerie Soufflée» in Paris, the handles make each cup unique.
The allure of the forbidden
Richard Yasmine’s Divine Decadence collection of vases, bowls and candle holders is a celebration of opulence and provocation. The series combines cool marble with sharp, stainless steel spikes and delicate, handmade jasmine flowers in double silk organza. Yasmine calls these «the fruit of sin» – a symbol representing seduction.
Each piece contains a protruding element made of shiny mother-of-pearl. Not only is this functional, but it’s deliberately reminiscent of intimate body parts. Divine Decadence encourages you to question taboos, discover beauty in the unconventional and merge the boundaries between art, design and fetish.
Glass design with attitude
When it comes to these pieces, glass is the medium used to demonstrate the balance between fragility and strength. Handmade in Italy, these Arsenico drinking glasses, created by Studionotte, are inspired by the female form. And they make a clear statement. Eye-catching details such as the nipple-like extrusions on the stem and base are a real breakaway from traditional expectations.
The glasses were featured in Milan-based brand Traga’s «Glasslands» exhibition focusing on the relationship between glass and people. Glass combines fragility and strength, intimacy and provocation; it’s a material with limitless possibilities.
Worm or pipe?
Created by Pani Jurek, these ceramic lamps are modular, minimalist and truly unique, with a shape you could describe as something between «weird» and «fascinating». Handmade from white clay, the lamps are glazed in 14 colours – perfect for adding character to a room. Describing the idea behind the lamps, the studio says, «We created the OP objects to reveal the extraordinary relationship between colour and light – and shed light on the material beauty of ceramics.»
Each lamp is manufactured in a restored historic building in Poland, where design, artistry and a love of experimentation come together. From the clay mixing to the glazing, a great deal of passion goes into every step of the process.
Ever-changing sculptures
Tara Dahlin, founder of the Swedish studio Tada, sparks people’s curiosity with her sculptural soap. Made from African black soap and pine oil, the soap looks and feels slightly strange. The pointy bits gently massage your hands, getting softer and smaller over time. In other words, the sculptural soap’s always changing.
Tara herself says: «I had the idea one day and had to have a nap straight after. It’s a sculpture that keeps changing – it’s a bit too cool, hence the nap. Thanks to my friends and my little community cheering me on, I actually stuck with it.»
Ghostly-looking furniture
With the Boo collection, French designer Tim Leclabart has shown just how exciting furniture can be. Clear lines and popping colours make pieces such as Lady Boo and Duck Boo immediately grab your attention. Leclabart describes his work as a new, experimental series representing a clear departure from his previous designs.
There are tons of other exciting ideas that break with tradition and really leave you wanting more. But I’ll save those for another time. Stay tuned!
Header image: Pia Seidel
Pia Seidel
Senior Editor
Pia.Seidel@digitecgalaxus.chLike a cheerleader, I love celebrating good design and bringing you closer to everything furniture- and interior design- related. I regularly curate simple yet sophisticated interior ideas, report on trends and interview creative minds about their work.
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