Adventure Gamers - Forums

My national newspaper has a regular feature called Beautiful: a photo of a new product, available online or in brick-and-mortar stores, which apparently someone at the newspaper finds interesting. Here’s this week’s pic. A reed bench.

From the designer’s site: Reed is cut down in winter and bundled as furniture piece for summer. After the season the sheaves fall apart. Returned into nature, as compost for new willow and reed.

So what’s the price of this ugly bench which falls apart after one season? Guess.

1460 euros

BWAHAHAHAHAAAAAA!!!!

That’s some profit margin for a product with practically NO base material cost…

Fien - 24 February 2013 06:54 AM

So what’s the price of this ugly bench which falls apart after one season? Guess.

1460 euros

BWAHAHAHAHAAAAAA!!!!

To top it all, one who bought (was stupid enough to buy, that is) this unique bench ought to live in a constant fear of one of those reeds sticking where the sun doesn’t shine.

Kasper F. Nielsen - 25 February 2013 05:19 AM

I like the design and idea, but the cost is insane. This should be a low-price mass-produce product, not something hoity toity that costs an arm and a leg.

You like the idea? The designer stole the idea from the traditional straw bale. You can get a straw bale for 3 or 4 euros. Use it as a garden bench and when it starts to decompose you can grow tomatoes and stuff in it. I’m not kidding you. Strawbalegardening!

tsa - 04 March 2013 01:26 AM

If people want to pay that much for some straw, why not? Of course the Netherlands is also the home of Piet Hein Eek, famous for his furniture made from wood that was used in other things before. A table from his hand easily does 4000 € while costing maybe 100 € in wood and labour. And look at this Kewlox cabinet: because his name is on there it’s about three times as expensive as a normal one! I think that’s brilliant and I hope to find a way to earn money that easily too somehow. If people want to pay ridiculous amounts for stuff please let them.

Wow, those are some ugly things…

Who’d even want that??? 

Fien - 25 February 2013 09:02 AM

Kasper F. Nielsen - 25 February 2013 05:19 AM

I like the design and idea, but the cost is insane. This should be a low-price mass-produce product, not something hoity toity that costs an arm and a leg.

You like the idea? The designer stole the idea from the traditional straw bale. You can get a straw bale for 3 or 4 euros. Use it as a garden bench and when it starts to decompose you can grow tomatoes and stuff in it. I’m not kidding you. Strawbalegardening!

I thought the design might have been inspired by reed boats- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reed_boat

Either way, your photo of straw bales just made me flash back to my childhood days spent playing in a barn’s hayloft.  Hay bales make awesome giant-sized building blocks for kids.  Just don’t mess around and break the twine bindings that hold them together or you’ll never hear the end of it!

Jatsie - 04 March 2013 11:56 AM

And there I was, thinking how much I loathe wicker furniture, and then this guy comes along and can’t even be bothered to weave the bits of reed together.

For €1,460 I’d at least expect a bench with a back.

Does your dislike of wicker furniture have anything to do with comedienne Fannie Flagg’s famous assertion that she could have been Miss Alabama if she hadn’t sat on a wicker chair while waiting for her turn in the swimsuit competition?

I thought the design might have been inspired by reed boats- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reed_boat

Those boats are beautiful and elegant! Unlike the reed bench.

(Yay non sequitur thread! )

I used to have one of those, but the insurance was un-be-liev-a-ble.