For more than half a century, Stylecraft has been a go-to destination for Australia’s design set, offering a curated collection of the best local and international brands. Pieces for homes, workplaces, hotels, restaurants and more can be found in Stylecraft showrooms and online, with the likes of Arper, Artemide, Tacchini, Prostoria, Ritzwell, Ross Gardam, and SKEEHAN all part of their suite.
The newest local design talent to join their offering is Mr.Fräg, an Australian studio that creates furniture, lighting, and homewares that have a functional honesty, material integrity, and a sense of poetry and wit. The man behind the brand is Frag Woodall, a Sydney local and UTS graduate who draws inspiration from a wide array of design influences and vernaculars.
Mr.Fräg at Stylecraft
Fräg’s inaugural launch with Stylecraft comprises four products that fall into two distinct categories: a series celebrating paper-cord and a second collection that pays homage to the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright.
The first of these two families includes the PaperBird Chair and PaperTube Chair, two different seating forms that offer comfort without the need for traditional upholstery. Using the classic Danish-paper-corded chairs of mid-century Scandinavia as a point of departure, both chairs are constructed from a language of antonyms, rebelling against traditional typologies and pursuing a wholly new and distinct design language.
Moving beyond the intricately woven cord that define many mid-century Scandinavian chairs, PaperBird and PaperTube are crafted using paper-cord which is linearly bound between a frame of timber and steel tubing respectively. The chairs embody Frag as both craftsman and storyteller, combining playfulness and refinement in a way that pays respect to their Scandinavian forebears while remaining fiercely contemporary.
“The journey matured in an effort to move beyond the intricately woven cord that define many mid-century Scandinavian chairs,” says Frag. “While these designs are beautiful in their own right, this was a hindrance for me in the design process as I didn’t want to replicate the past. Instead, I aimed to honour the material’s qualities in a contemporary way.”
The Kaufmann lounge and side table also ignite a dialogue with the past, as two pieces inspired by one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s most esteemed architectural works, Fallingwater. The shape, materiality, and tones of both lounge and side table echo the essence of this iconic home, referencing the bold and dynamic forms of the architecture and capturing the deceptive simplicity of mid-century typologies.
A material palette of rich woodgrains in American Walnut, American Oak, and Oak stained to black, along with honed Black Stone Granite, and customisable fabrics reimagines the core elements of Fallingwater. Similarly, the counterbalanced planes and volumes of furniture construction recall the building’s structure while simultaneously creating furniture that anchors a space as its functional focal point.
Mr.Fräg Insitu
While all four of these pieces have a beauty that translates in both showroom and product shoots, when they are in a functioning space, their richness and depth of consideration truly shine.
The PaperTube chair and Kaufmann lounge were recently specified in a Melbourne residence designed by local firm C Kairouz Architects, where the embodiment of past and present come to life against the original features of the federation home. With a refined approach to colours, materials and textures creating an artfully restrained dialogue with the home’s architecture, the reimagined vernaculars of Scandinavian design and Lloyd Wright’s “organic design” act as points of focus in the interior design. The detail of both the lounge and dining chair, and the subtle finesse of the designs, allow them to serve as hero pieces of the home’s interiors, anchoring the space without the need for brash colourways or superfluous details.
In the words of Mr. Fräg himself, “Individual elements contribute to the design, however it is storytelling that is the true artful activity that glues and binds together the elements together. It is these ideals that I try to peruse and when they are present I feel that a design has more relatability and clarity”.
Mr.Fräg is now available in Stylecraft showrooms and online.
Mr. Fräg | Stylecraft
stylecraft.com.au/brands/mr-frag
Photography
Shannon McGrath