Waffle Connectors
Unfold uses glass connectors, which are pressed into grid shapes using a waffle iron, to assemble its stool without glue or screws (image: Unfold).
“We wanted to explore glass pressing, but we didn’t have a mould,” says Claire Warnier, co-founder of Antwerp-based design practice Unfold, as she describes the start of the studio’s collaboration with glass artist Frederick Rombach. “So I said, ‘Let's try using a waffle iron. They are abundant here in Belgium.’”
Warnier’s idea worked like a charm: squeezing balls of molten glass between the jaws of a waffle iron created grids of glass that are as thick and crisp as the sweet treats they resemble. Each piece took its colour from the recycled drinks bottles that the glass came from, creating jade green, pale blue and syrupy brown translucent waffles. “It creates a very regular grid,” Warnier says, explaining how she, Rombach, and Unfold co-founder Dries Verbruggen began to play around with stacking the glass waffles on top of each other. “We started to see them as a kind of building block system.”
Pressing the glass using a waffle iron (image: Sam Gilbert).
The team also started to research the history of the waffle in Belgian culture. “Belgium was kind of a buffer between Germany, France and Britain, and when it became a country they didn’t have a king or anyone who could lead it,” Warnier explains, describing a satirical cartoon they found in the Rijksmuseum of Twente in the Netherlands that had a row of headless people gathered in front of a banner with a waffle printed on it. “The text said, ‘Belgium, the country without a head,’” Warnier recalls. The image prompted the team to reflect on the waffle as a symbol of unity within Belgium. “There are not so many things that bind the country together,” Warnier says, describing how the nation is divided between French- and Dutch-speaking regions. “But the waffle is something that is really considered very Belgian.”
The glass connectors fit into the waffle shapes in wood like puzzle pieces (image: Unfold).
Inspired by the connectivity of the waffle, the team decided to create a stool that is held together solely using glass waffles. After 3D scanning the waffle shapes, they CNC milled a grid pattern on the underside of the stool’s seat and the tops of its legs. Then, they sandwiched the glass waffle connectors between the seat and the legs, so that the glass and wood slotted together like puzzle pieces. “That’s my favourite part,” Warnier says. “You can feel it click together.” The collaboration with Romach began through the Duos en Résonances programme, organised by Wallonie Design, which brings artisans and designers together to develop ideas. “What we really like to do is to combine the digital with handmade crafts,” Warnier says, describing how this project builds upon the studio’s previous work combining different materials and processes by blowing glass into 3D-printed ceramics.
Image: Sam Gilbert.
Another image the team came across during their research was The Fight Between Carnival and Lent, a painting by Dutch and Flemish Renaissance artist Pieter Bruegel, which features a man with three waffles strapped to his head like a crown. “The waffle is associated with carnivals or feasts, and it has this funny or strange connotation to it that's quite in the tradition of Belgian surrealism,” Warnier says. While Unfold’s stool is sleek and elegant, made from only three wooden pieces with pale blue glass peeking out like fins, it also represents a finely executed joke that adds to the humorous reputation of the waffle. “Waffles are the glue of shaky construction,” Warnier laughs.
Words Helen Gonzalez Brown