Gustaf Westman Wants to Burst the Design Bubble by Making It More Fun
No matter the object, you can always recognize the work of Gustaf Westman. Whether it’s a table, a chair, a lamp, or a room divider, the charming piece in question will be dripping with color, curves, and a playful personality that demands your attention from across the room, (it’s also unapologetically Scandinavian).
Counting celebrities like Tyler, the Creator and Olivia Rodrigo as fans, as well as fashion influencers such as Vivid Wu and Marie Wibe Jideg, his signature designs have become staples in well-designed homes (and social posts of them).
One of Westman’s first customers was the Swedish fashion stylist Hanna MW — after they collaborated on a floor length mirror for her apartment in 2020, now known as the Curvy Mirror, the demand for his creations surged. (In terms of influence, the Curvy Mirror is often compared to Jean Royère and Ettore Sottsass.) Since then, Westman has six categories of products to his name ranging from €55 to €3600. All the while, he’s committed to maintaining a small scale operation built with a solid infrastructure.
Whether it's smaller objects like the Chunky Cup, which came to Westman while he was out on a run one day — he vividly remembers taking a detour in the forest to stop and draw it in the mud, then racing back home to his sketchbook before the vision was lost. “The idea for the saucer was to make it hard to spill it in,” he recalls. “I always have my cup in a bed so I wanted to have this barrier around the cup — a big chunky saucer — so it just stays.” Or his larger scale pieces like the Blob Table or Curvy Bench , everything produced is made-to-order or produced in very limited quantities.
Aside from having all that on his plate, Westman is still figuring out how he feels about getting the DIY treatment on TikTok (we're sure you've seen the Curvy Mirror recreations), but he’d rather have people tag him if they’re going to pull directly from his work. “I really love that people can be a part of my design without buying it,” he adds. “They’re spreading the style.”
Some might say it all began after Westman graduated from Chalmers University in Gothenburg, but by his own account he was sketching ideas for designs as a child. Although he didn’t grow up in a creative household while living in South Sweden, Westman always had a sketchbook in hand to collect his fleeting inspirations whenever a spark of creativity struck.
When he eventually left the countryside to study architecture, Westman found himself most interested in the shapes of buildings — it was the exteriors that captivated him. But the competitive landscape of the field propelled Westman toward interiors, so he targeted spaces in Stockholm that he considered “ugly” with the hopes of giving them a makeover. After pitching his portfolio around town, Westman finally landed his first major client, Daniel Redgert, and was hired to redesign his PR firm’s new office; following the success of that project, he made valuable connections that led to even more work.
Westman admits that he wasn’t earning much money from those early interior projects, but beyond gaining experience, the real deal breaker was having the opportunity to design at least one special object for the client — and saying “yes” to any color request. Unsurprisingly, a growth of interest in buying some of those one-offs developed, and that’s how his furniture line came to fruition. “I don't know if coincidence is the right word, but it was not on purpose that I started to produce furniture,” Westman says from the seat of a dining table on Zoom. “It was more that people wanted it.”
With the release of more accessible objects like the Chunky Cups and Chunky plates, Westman plans to continue working on smaller objects: Next up in the queue is a vase and he’s also experimenting with new materials, fabrics, and metals for furniture.
“When you see my objects, I want you to understand in one second what it is,” he explains. “So if I wanted to do a mirror with a curvy frame, that’s going to take one second to understand if you see it. I always go from one idea and try to take that idea down to its core, like a table with a round edge. I think the color helps to give the whole object identity.”
While he doesn’t subscribe to trends, fashion continues to be one of Westman’s greatest sources of inspiration because it’s the ultimate capsule for reflecting in real time. He hopes to collaborate with a brand in the not-so-distant future (some of his favorites include Loewe, Jacquemus, and Cecilie Bahnsen), but until then he’s busy making objects for spaces with functional limits like restaurants.
Even now, Westman likes to think of his objects as small buildings. He observes how he “trickled down from architecture to interiors to objects,” but everything is still connected by a common thread. With that in mind, the designer confesses that he doesn’t necessarily want people to feel pressured to buy every object in every color. On the contrary, he’s really keen on someone only having one cup or plate to use however they see fit. “People say that when they look at my stuff, they want to eat it,” he laughs. “That’s the best compliment I would say.”
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