You know that moment when you see something in your head so clearly that you're pretty sure it already exists? Yeah, that's where most of our stuff starts. Someone in the Found Atelier studio has an idea, usually while staring at a problem that nobody else seems to notice. Last year, we were obsessing over how books just kind of, well, fall over. Not dramatically, but that annoying lean where you know they'll topple eventually. So we sketched. A lot.
We filled notebooks with terrible drawings, angles that looked weird, proportions that didn't work. The thing about acryl is that it needs to be machined precisely, so a sketch that looks fine on paper can fall apart completely when you try to turn it into something real. That gap between the drawing and the object is where most of the work actually happens.
Why we choose acryl
Acryl is not the obvious choice for a home object. Wood is warmer. Ceramic is more traditional. Metal is tougher. But acryl does something that those materials can't: it holds color differently. When you add pigment to acryl during the casting process, the color becomes the material. It doesn't sit on top. It goes all the way through. Which means it doesn't chip, fade at the edges, or look worn after a year of use.
We also made a conscious decision early on to use recycled acryl. Industrial acryl offcuts, material that would otherwise go to waste, get repurposed into the raw sheets we machine our products from. The environmental argument is obvious, but there's also a practical one: recycled acryl has a slightly different optical quality than virgin material. A little less uniform. A little more interesting to look at in certain light conditions. That felt right for what we were making.
Picking colors
Color selection sounds easy. It isn't. We don't pick colors because they're trending or because a mood board said so. We pick them because of how they behave in a real interior. Icy Blue gets tested against grey walls, white walls, wooden shelves. Vibrant Orange gets put next to everything we can think of to see where it works and where it competes.
The colors in the Found Atelier range are not random. Each one was chosen because it does something specific in a neutral space. Forest Green because it belongs to a visual family that most interiors already contain: wood tones, plants, natural materials. Galaxy Purple because it's the one color that reads as both warm and cool depending on the light. Midnight Black because it grounds a surface in a way no other color does.
We reject a lot of colors. Some look great in the studio and terrible in a home. Some work in summer light and look wrong in winter. The final selection is smaller than the one we started with, and that's the point.
What goes wrong with prototypes
Most prototypes fail in one of three ways. The proportions are off, meaning the object is technically correct but doesn't feel right in your hand or on a shelf. The tolerances are wrong, meaning two pieces that should fit together don't, or they fit too loosely. Or the color behaves differently in the final machined form than it did in the raw sheet.
We've thrown away a lot of material. Bookstands that held books fine but looked wrong. Mirror frames that were the right dimensions but the wrong weight. Phone holders that worked mechanically but sat awkwardly on a desk surface. Each failed prototype teaches something, but that doesn't make throwing them out any less frustrating.
Knowing when something is finished
This is the hardest part. There's always something you could adjust. A slightly different angle. A rounder edge. A different surface finish. At some point you have to decide that the object is what it's supposed to be and stop changing it.
For us, the test is simple: put the object in a real space, on a real shelf, with real books or a real phone, and look at it. Not in the studio. Not on a white photography background. In an actual home, with actual light, surrounded by the things it will spend its life next to. If it looks right there, it's done. If something pulls your eye in the wrong direction, you go back.
The bookstand took four prototypes. The mirror frame took six. The phone holder took three and a half, which means we almost had it on the third try but not quite. Each one is done now. Each one sat in someone's home before it reached yours.