It seemed like a good idea, I thought about ten years ago, leaning on the surface I was working on, to take a break and turn part of the table into a playground, leaving my fingerprints there… That became a pattern for future pieces in my workshop.
I’ve already written about imprints, which symbolize and sign my work. By now, I had started playing with them, leaving them more freely as an inseparable part of the game on the “underside,” which had already transformed into my personal playground.
But it was far from just a neglected, unfinished playground—I wasn’t simply leaving it messy. Every fingerprint and every other game I started there required additional hours and days of work to make everything tactilely perfect. I wanted someone sitting at the table, running their palm over that underside, to experience the sensation of play, the effort invested, and the satisfaction of a surface finished with a velvet-like touch.
One thing troubled me—how to preserve the integrity of these undersides without disrupting them with table legs and their joints, which are essential structural elements. But let that remain a topic for another time…
It was precisely on this playground that the idea was born: to make each piece look like a sculpture, no matter which way it was turned. I imagined it resting on a glass floor…
Thank you for reading,
Nemanja Lakić
