The Pastille Collection by Emeline Ong
Emeline Ong’s Pastille Collection feels like a delightful rebellion against the monotony of conventional furniture design. At the heart of the Pastille Collection is Ong’s fascination with candy—its colors, textures, and irresistible allure.
The Pastille Collection displays not just pieces of furniture; they’re sculptural embodiments of a dreamlike vision, where the everyday becomes extraordinary, and the mundane transforms into something whimsical and provocative. Steeped in a playful sensibility yet unafraid to flaunt their raw, imperfect edges, Ong’s creations challenge the boundaries of form, material, and process, offering an unapologetically fresh perspective on contemporary living.
The tables radiate a confectionery charm, their soft pastel hues and rounded, monolithic forms evoking the sugary sweetness of childhood memories. But just when you’re lulled into thinking these pieces are all softness and innocence, their brutalist finish delivers a jarring contrast. The raw edges, exposed seams, and layered textures speak to a deeper narrative: one of labor, process, and the unapologetic celebration of imperfection. It’s as if these tables wear their scars proudly, inviting you to see beauty in their flaws.
Ong’s design process is as bold and unorthodox as the tables themselves. Forgoing industrial perfection, she embraces the tactile, messy, and hands-on nature of crafting. Using composite paper pulp—a material often overlooked in the realm of high design—Ong reinvents it into something extraordinary. This isn’t the pristine paper pulp of a recycled world; this is a medium shredded, blended, and layered with deliberate intent, a substance brought to life through painstaking craftsmanship. Custom 3D-printed molds, assembled with bolts and nuts, act as the framework for this alchemical process. The molds themselves, split into smaller, manageable sections, reveal Ong’s ingenious adaptation to the limitations of medium-scale 3D printing.
By combining smaller parts into larger configurations, she not only sidesteps the technical constraints of her tools but also transforms these limitations into a distinctive design language.
The demolding process is where the tables truly come alive. As the pulp mixture hardens and the molds are peeled away, the seams where the pieces meet form bold graphic lines—an aesthetic flourish that’s both incidental and intentional. These lines, along with the visible layers of compressed material, are left raw and exposed, acting as a visual archive of the table’s creation. Ong resists the urge to sand away these traces or hide them behind a polished façade; instead, she amplifies them, making the imperfections the centerpiece of her design. The result is a collection that feels both refined and rough, poised and chaotic—a deliberate tension that speaks to the human hand behind every detail.
What sets the Pastille Collection apart is its defiance of categorization. These tables are not merely functional objects; they are statements, provocations, and celebrations. They seem to whisper, “Look closer. Touch me. Understand how I came to be.” Their candy-like softness draws you in, but their rawness demands you stay. In a design world that often prioritizes sleek perfection and high-gloss finishes, Ong’s work feels like an act of rebellion. It’s a reminder that beauty doesn’t have to be polished or pristine; it can be messy, raw, and filled with character.
But there’s more to this collection than its aesthetic allure. Ong’s use of sustainable materials and accessible tools reflects a commitment to responsible, thoughtful design. The composite paper pulp she uses is not only eco-friendly but also democratic in its simplicity, highlighting the possibilities of working with unconventional mediums. This sustainability doesn’t come at the expense of creativity; instead, it becomes the foundation for a new kind of artistry—one that celebrates the material’s inherent qualities rather than masking them. Ong’s process is one of deep curiosity and experimentation, driven by a joyful spirit and an unrelenting desire to create something meaningful.
The Pastille Collection is ultimately a reflection of Ong’s broader design philosophy. It’s a universe where whimsy and rawness coexist, where the imperfections of the making process are elevated to art, and where the ordinary is reimagined into the extraordinary. The tables are at once playful and edgy, soft and striking, inviting and unapologetic. They challenge you to see beyond their candy-like colors and rounded forms, to appreciate the labor, ingenuity, and imperfections that define them. In doing so, they become more than just furniture; they become a celebration of creation itself—a tangible expression of Ong’s dreamlike, curious vision of the world.
With the Pastille Collection, Emeline Ong has crafted not just a series of tables but a manifesto. It’s a call to embrace the messy, the imperfect, and the raw. It’s an invitation to find beauty in the seams, the textures, and the traces of process. And above all, it’s a reminder that design can—and should—be joyful, curious, and unafraid to push boundaries.
INFO
@emeline.ong
https://emeline.ong/
The project was presented in:
EMERGE @ FIND Design Fair Singapore Design Week 2024
SaloneSatellite 2024 Milan Design Week 2024
All Photography & Videography Credit: Isaac Lim Yi Jie