Designer Gert Eussen, who you may remember from our favorite spherical treehouse, is making chairs from potatoes. Actual, little, brown potatoes, seat-shaped and dried out. No, they’re not doll furniture: they’re models for the larger, people-sized real thing. The potato chair is built to the specifications of a real potato, and made of bio-plastic to boot.
It’s one of the oldest guidlines of craftsmanship — to let the materials inform the design — but rarely do you see an example so direct, striking and quirky. You get the sense that the potato just decided that this was the chair it was going to make today, thank you very much, wrinkles and all. Eussen’s chairs are carved into cute, elegant and cozy shapes, and as an eco-design bonus, they are also brown and earthy. As a hilarity bonus, they look like something out of a claymation set. Plus, each chair is so distinctive you could probably name them individually. I would call mine “Mister.”
[...] Potatoes are good for more than just filling up your stomach on the quick; they’re also potential sources of electricity, according to Yissum Research Development Company Ltd. The company, which is an arm of Hebrew University of Jerusalem, has developed a “solid organic electric battery based upon treated potatoes” that is five to fifty times cheaper than commercial 1.5 volt D cells and Energizer e91 cell batteries. The light generated from the potato battery is also at least 6 times more economical than kerosene lamps. [...]