Jenny Ekdahl is currently pursuing her Masters degree at Sweden's Lund University School of Industrial Design. Her Spring 2011 project "Charms & Disguises," which was recently exhibited at DMY Berlin, is an exploration of the deeper meaning of fairy tales.This project is about fairy tales that are worth remembering. Stories aimed for adults as well as for children. This project is about fairy tale furniture worth listening to. They tell stories, only to those who wants to hear and is prepared to listen. They tell stories, formed by thousands of years of fairy tale tradition... Written by your own imagination.

The three pieces—"each inspired by the three different genres of original and dark fairytales; folk tales, art fairytales and fables"—capture both the strong sense of imagination behind the folklore and Ekdale's intuition in translating the uncanny into tangible objects.

For example, "Bye Bye Little Lamb" is a play on the "wolf in sheep's clothing," a stool with obvious zoomorphic reference points. The contrast between the brushed aluminum legs and the woolly cushion imparts a further dimension of artifice to the wolf's limb, disguised among the other three legs.

According to Ekdahl, "the stool is made of aluminum, horsehair, recycled padding, linen and sheep skin. The wolf's leg is sandcasted in aluminum. I carved out the mold for the leg from foam by hand."

"Mirror Mirror" is a series of three pairs of lamps that can be clamped to a shalf, tabletop, or (if the pictures are any indication) a tree branch. Each is a simple metaphor for good and evil, where "the user can decide which 'happy ending' he prefers, good or evil."

Last but not least, the "Golden Stool," a riff on inside/outside dualism. Its homely exterior belies a treasure within. As with "Bye Bye Little Lamb," Ekdahl opts for handcraftsmanship as opposed to digital fabrication: "The stool is made out of a solid wooden stem of ash, formed by hand with a chainsaw. The surface is sanded and treated with soap to keep the light wooden color. I made the small stool out of brass, processed by turning. The light source is LED in an E14 socket."

"Bye Bye Little Lamb" is my personal favorite... a variation on a theme, I guess.