Design duo Jonathan de Swaaf and Joanne Byrne make everything in-house on the ground floor of an old factory in Toronto’s west end.David Kerr/The Globe and Mail
It was 2013, when design duo Joanne Byrne and Jonathan de Swaaf were working on a wall treatment for a restaurant, that they first experimented with resin. The pair, whose Toronto studio is known as Creators of Objects, constructed clear cherry blossom flowers to give the installation a 3-D effect.
A few years later, in 2016, Byrne and de Swaaf started exploring what else was possible with the material. “We were inspired by the sculpture artist Rachel Whiteread,” Byrne says. “She’s an incredible resin artist who does negative space castings.” They started with small objects, like Ghostwriter, solid resin books that poke fun at coffee table tomes that people rarely read, and eventually graduated to furniture pieces. The most notable is their Pop floating console, a wall-mounted table with a curved edge that evokes a giant sea glass pebble. Their Oort series (named after the celestial shell that surrounds our solar system) includes hollow, circular and square tables with rounded edges.
To create their hollow Creators of Objects pieces, they use a process called roto-casting, spinning multiple layers of colourful resin in a form.David Kerr/The Globe and Mail
Creators of Objects makes everything in-house on the ground floor of an old factory in Toronto’s west end. To make the hollow products, small amounts of resin are poured inside a fibreglass mould, which is secured and rotated around multiple axes in a process called roto-casting. “It’s a way of casting things centrifugally, by pushing the material to the edges of the mould as it spins,” de Swaaf says. The technique mimics how some plastic gas canisters are made, but slower. Up to nine layers of resin are applied over 48 hours to give items form and structure, each layer taking about an hour to distribute and cure. The pieces are then sanded and polished for up to two days, revealing an ultra-glossy result. “There’s nothing as satisfying as that final polishing and cleaning of the piece,” Byrne says. “You finally see the gem that was in the rough.”
Pieces are sanded and polished for up to two days, revealing an ultra-glossy result. “There’s nothing as satisfying as that final polishing and cleaning of the piece,” Byrne says.David Kerr/The Globe and Mail
Each piece ends up looking a bit different, depending on how each layer cures. “They all have undulating interiors, so you get this beautiful light pattern that goes through them,” Byrne says. The resulting rippled texture is reminiscent of water. “I like to call that the David Hockney effect,” Byrne says, referring to the British pop artist who famously captured the movement of waves in painted swimming pool scenes.
While these hollow items are Creators of Objects’ hallmarks, the duo make more solid pieces too, like the 180-pound foggy resin tabletop for their Ceres table. The prices of their furniture start at $5,000, reflecting the time and care involved in manufacturing each piece to order. The pair plan to add outdoor furniture to their product line in 2026 (they’ll use a composite material since, as robust and weather-resistant as it looks, resin can’t be kept outside). But they’re most excited about venturing into the world of lighting, experimenting with the different ways that hollow forms can cast a glow. “Resin is kind of a natural lens,” de Swaaf says of their future ambitions. “It seems to be an obvious way to go.”