search

TAKT launches Plint: the crafted coffee table by Cecilie Manz

Plint by TAKT in collaboration with Cecilie Manz, is the easiest two pieces, and self-assembly coffee table made out of leather and wood.

Hot on the heels of its first anniversary, TAKT – the Danish furniture brand known for its timeless Scandinavian aesthetic and accessible, sustainable business model – has collaborated with one of the country’s leading designers, Cecilie Manz, to release Plint. This beautifully crafted wooden coffee table, with vegetable-tanned leather hinges and a delightfully simple self-assembly mechanism, will be available to order in October.

Manz’s first design for TAKT, the Plint Coffee Table joins the brand’s existing collection of flatpack chairs, tables, benches and stools. It introduces new functionality to the range, while embodying TAKT’s characteristic material focus on sustainable woods, timeless Scandinavian simplicity, easy assembly and attention to detail.

Cecilie Manz the designer that collaborated with TAKT – Photo Credit: Casper Sejersen

Plint also shares TAKT’s emphasis on versatility. The rectangular table is the size and shape to feature in any room of the home: as a regular coffee table in front of the sofa; as a side table positioned against the wall or beneath a window; or as a platform to stack books and papers.

Plint is the result of a collaboration between one of Denmark’s best-established design talents and its most exciting emerging start-up. A multiple award-winning industrial designer, Cecilie Manz has worked with some of the leading names in contemporary furniture and product design, including Fredericia Furniture, Duravit, Muuto and B&O. Now, she joins the likes of Pearson Lloyd, Rasmus Palmgren, Thomas Bentzen and Sam Hecht-and-Kim Colin in TAKT’s hand-picked family of designers producing ‘Danish design with a global outlook’.

Plint has a Scandinavian style and it’s made with natural material – Photo Credit: Mikkel Mortensen

“We subscribe to classic Danish design virtues: a focus on functionality, honest and natural materials, reduced ornamentation while still retaining personality. Cecilie Manz has this amazing touch to her designs – a pared back aesthetic that doesn’t shout but has this strong personality, presence and atmosphere.” – Henrik Taudorf Lorensen, Founder & CEO at TAKT.

TAKT’s breakthrough proposition is high-quality Danish design made from sustainable materials and sold direct to customers at a fair and accessible price. Its flatpack distribution model reduces fuel consumption and carbon emissions during the production process, as well as creating opportunities for cost savings that can be passed on to the customer. The challenge for TAKT’s designers is to develop intuitive self-assembly mechanisms that sidestep the frustrations many people encounter with flatpack.

The table is reduces into two components and has an intuitive self-assembly mechanisms – Photo Credit: Victor Neumann

Cecilie Manz’s ingenious solution reduces the table to just two components: tabletop and apron. The tabletop is attached to the legs with leather hinges. The apron is fitted with a leather loop that is fed through an aperture in the supports and fixed in place with an octagonal wedge. This allows the table to be cost-effectively shipped in a narrow, completely flat package, and to be quickly assembled with ease: no need for glue, bolts or screws.

“A small plinth is a type of furniture I often return to, as it’s highly functional and self-explanatory to use. Leather as a hinging material is something I’ve been exploring a lot over the past 10 years – it’s interesting to use an ordinary but genuine material such as full-grain leather where it makes functional sense to do so – as little as possible in the right place.” – Cecilie Manz, designer of Plint for TAKT

Nobody can resist the fascination of Scandinavian Style, not even Greece: have you seen the Kanel bakery shop by Fluo?

The components are cut form a single piece of timber giving a more fluid pattern of grain – Photo Credit: Mikkel Mortensen

The tabletop and the side pieces are cut from a single piece of hand-selected timber, which gives a fluid pattern of grain, interrupted only by the leather hinge – this allows it to fold flat as a continuous plank of wood. The wedge connection – a mechanism reminiscent of the ‘pegged stretcher’ joinery method sometimes found in traditional dining tables – is finely crafted to ensure the connection is secure and the assembled structure is stable and robust.

Plint is crafted from two principal materials: wood and leather. As with all TAKT products that feature leather, Plint is made using high-quality hides produced using a chrome-free tanning process. The leather is sourced from the small Swedish tannery Tärnsjö Garveri, one of the few tanning houses which still practises environmentally conscious vegetable tanning (using bark extracts) as opposed to the time-efficient but more polluting chrome-based technique popular with many furniture manufacturers.

The leather is sourced from a local Swedish tannery that only use chrome-free tanning processes – Photo Credit: Mikkel Mortensen

Three wood options are available: Oregon Pine, Kalmar Pine and Oak, each of which has a different aesthetic effect. Oregon Pine has a precise and regular grain structure and a warm golden glow. Slow-grown Kalmar Pine from Swedish forests has a soft, bright look and a beautiful grain pattern. The Oak version is darker, and more rustic in appearance.

The tabletop and side pieces are from a single, flawless piece, which must be hand – selected and then cut precisely from logs to create the desired surface texture and grain. The finished planks are then machined to ensure the highest possible degree of precision before the leather components are fixed into place.

As with all TAKT furniture, Plint has been awarded with the EU flower mark, the Ecolabel which acknowledges an end-to-end commitment to sustainability in material sourcing, production, transportation and recyclability.

Three different type of wood are available: Oregon Pine, Kalmar Pine and Oak – Photo Credit: Victor Neumann

As is the case with TAKT’s other products, Plint’s component parts are available to buy from TAKT as spares, maximising its lifespan by allowing the user to repair it – if necessary after years of use.

All wood used in production of Plint is certified by the Forest Stewardship Council, and treated only with natural oils. As well as ensuring the wood will develop a characterful patina over time, this allows the customer to engage with their furniture by easily removing blemishes or repair damage to the surface by applying sandpaper and a new oil treatment – again and again.

Creating a piece of furniture that is sustainable in every aspect it’s a challenge: Konstantin Grcic’s managed to do so with the Bell Chair for Magis.

Plint’s components part are available to buy at spares allowing people to repair the furniture – Photo Credit: Mikkel Mortensen

No related posts
Send this to a friend