2024

A commission for the recently restored and reopened Sapieha Palace, now functioning as a branch of the CAC.

The Lazy series, reminiscent of a daybed, evokes the aristocratic lifestyle of the 17th and 18th centuries, when the building served as a residential palace. This association also brings to mind the memory of those who once lay here as patients, following the building’s conversion into a hospital in the mid-19th century. The contrast between velvet and exposed jute upholstery belts reflects the layers of the palace’s history—both its surface and the inwards.

I have always been suspicious of soft furniture, which often conceals a less-than-noble construction. In this design, the simple oak frame is purposefully separated and exposed, clearly defined from the upholstered section that embraces it.

Produced by Ruksa.

Photographed by Darius Petrulaitis.

Ash wood, linen, steel, animal glue, cosmetic foundation, furniture oil

2023

It’s hard to say how much it is us who create things and how much they realise themselves, using fragments of our (sub)conscious archives.

This screen is the result of a quick sketch; indeterminate, still forming, with a top that resembles a sea-washed rocaille – a synthesised motif of elemental nature. Divided into unequal parts, it could also be associated with a book. Undressed, or perhaps not yet dressed, the screen acts like lace on the body, emphasising rather than covering it. It is a “dignified” piece of furniture with a function, not a decoration; therefore, it stands firmly grounded on its lion’s paws abstracted by different eras.

Manufactured with the help of Martynas Gailiušas.

Photo: Darius Petrulaitis

Ashwood, jute, steel, silk, river pearls, silver, animal glue, cosmetic foundation, furniture oil

2023

Paradoxically, the typical ornate Italian X-chair, or scissors chair, is often also named after Savonarola, a 15th-century religious fanatic and preacher who burned cosmetics, artworks, and books and urged people to renounce all beauty and pleasures. The stately-sounding name of Savonarola, or sometimes also Dante, was given to this chair by 19th-century furniture merchants. However, the piece is in fact linked not only to the late Middle Ages and the Italian Renaissance, but also to Ancient Egypt and Rome, where, as a symbol of power and authority, it got another name: sella curulis, or ‘chariot chair'.

This interpretation is an associative reference to the courtesan culture of the Renaissance and the fragile position of power in a patriarchal society.

Manufactured with the help of Martynas Gailiušas.

In collaboration with Goda Palekaitė

Coloured glass, beech wood, birch, halogen bulbs, cables

2023

These collaborative works by Goda Palekaitė and Marija Puipaitė introduce the Four Humours theory, which was the most wide-spread medical theory up until the 19th century. Based on Ancient Egyptian wisdom and systematised by Hippocrates and Galen, humorism claims that a human body consists of four humours, or vital bodily fluids: blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile. The balance of these determines our physical and mental health; our tendencies and character (the character types being sanguine, phlegmatic, choleric and melancholic accordingly); whether we are of cold or hot, dry or wet temper; and whether we are closer to earth, water, air or fire. The four elements are also directly connected to star constellations.

In these sculptures, glass shapes of the human organs responsible for producing the humours (heart, lung, pancreas and spleen) meet the legs of a pseudo-historical chair to form Venetian Renaissance street torches. With Four Humours, the artists propose to see this pre-modern science as an enlightened, holistic approach towards which contemporary medicine is gravitating again: recognizing our body through different perspectives, when our nutrition, habits, psychology, material and cosmic environment all form an interconnected system.

Produced with the assistance of Paloma Bouhana, Jesse Magee, and Lina Šuminaitė.

Photo: Jonas Balsevičius

Inquiries: galerija@galerijavartai.lt

Ash wood, oak, beech, steel; jute, flax thread, hemp rope; animal glue, cosmetic foundation, furniture oil

2023

This piece of furniture was born as a reflection on traditional upholstery art. The engineering layers of refined craftsmanship become one as the second stitch marks the first. The meticulousness combines with the force used to pull the belts, tie and curb the springs, and join the layers. The surgical gaze makes it possible to observe this living organism that creates form, offers the pleasure of sitting down, and ensures that this pleasure can last very long.

Although the curves of this nudie suggest a personal invitation to sit alone and a flirtation with historicism and folk art, its design started from the remains of two oak planks found in the shed, rejected by the restorer as worthless (in exchange for fixing the chest of drawers). The gaps that opened up between the ash structure and the solid oak induced a temptation to fill them with yet another type of wood.

Manufactured with the help of Martynas Gailiušas.

Photo: Jonas Balsevičius

Inquiries: Galerija Vartai

Birchwood, animal glue, cosmetic foundation, furniture oil, leather

2023

The second version of this object was born out of dissatisfaction with the first and a desire for it to be perceived as maximally “real” as something opposite to a prop: the insides of the object are as important as the outside. Reflections on the importance of the inwards were inspired by the exaltation of the internals at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries, which was strongly influenced by the emergence of anatomy as a scientific practice. The guts and individual organs were expressed as a leitmotif in literature, visual arts, liturgical texts, and so on. During this period, the internals of the body, inseparable from the spiritual dimension, hid important truths, virtues, and sins to which only God had direct access and were transformed into a metaphor for the human’s acquired knowledge. Thanks to anatomical sciences, unknown knowledge, the mysterious interior of the body has become accessible to the human eye. This reflects a conflict in the world-view of the time: an attempt to accept that the body, which until then was hidden under a veil of mystery, had become unmasked, objectified.

Photo: Jonas Balsevičius

Inquiries: Galerija Vartai

2021 (first version)

2022

born in collaboration with Vytautas Gečas

Wishing to bring decor back into contemporary design, Marija Puipaitė and Vytautas Gečas took an acanthus - one of the most common plant forms in Western applied arts to make a foliage ornament and decoration - and deformed it to a level where it becomes a functional, independent, almost self-aware object.

Collaboration with Vytautas Gečas

It’s a series of objects based on the construction that allows a broad variety of shapes. The more elements you have - the more detailed curves you can get. Therefore, this construction can be applied to almost any furniture you imagine. On the one hand, it’s a complex object with lots of elements. On the other hand, unlike other soft furniture - these are completely honest and openly show the way they are built. The rhythmical construction allows admiring carefully crafted elements - the beechwood joints and the brass fittings.

By merging two different design practices, Marija Puipaitė, and Vytautas Gečas found a common point where the construction defines and forms a fluid shape into an ergonomic entity.

Materials: beechwood, velvet, foam, brass, blackened steel.

2020

Photo: Darius Petrulaitis

Inquiries: galerija@galerijavartai.lt

In collaboration with Vytautas Gečas

Aluminium, stainless steel

2019

Triggered by the fact that in the 16th century, at the dawn of a new epoch, the meaning of baroque was associated with something “bizarre and uselessly complicated,” Marija Puipaitė and Vytautas Gečas derived a parallel to the absence and devaluation of decor in our everyday surrounding. While investigating historical artifacts and techniques, they focused on the relevance of decoration and its possible forms in a contemporary design context. All of this, together with hands-on experimentation and a playful approach to contemporary materials and techniques, led to an eclectic collection called Romance & Gravity.

Wishing to reinstate a decor, they took decorative elements like frames and folds and transformed them into independent, almost self-aware, functional pieces. A frame of a mirror that became a mirror itself and a cupboard inspired by racing technologies have aspects of deformation and fluidity as if they are shaped by time and speed.

Photo: Darius Petrulaitis

Inquiries: info@galerijavartai.lt

In collaboration with Vytautas Gečas

Carbon fiber, epoxy resin, aluminum, blackened steel

2019

Triggered by the fact that in the 16th century, at the dawn of a new epoch, the meaning of baroque was associated with something “bizarre and uselessly complicated,” Marija Puipaitė and Vytautas Gečas derived a parallel to the absence and devaluation of decor in our everyday surrounding. While investigating historical artifacts and techniques, they focused on the relevance of decoration and its possible forms in a contemporary design context. All of this, together with hands-on experimentation and a playful approach to contemporary materials and techniques, led to an eclectic collection called Romance & Gravity.

Wishing to reinstate a decor, they took decorative elements like frames and folds and transformed them into independent, almost self-aware, functional pieces. A frame of a mirror that became a mirror itself and a cupboard inspired by racing technologies have aspects of deformation and fluidity as if they are shaped by time and speed.

Photo: Darius Petrulaitis

Inquiries: info@galerijavartai.lt

Chaise longue Envisioned Comfort

Collaboration with Vytautas Gečas

One of us had a fantasy about an object that could bring a womb-like pleasure, meaning - the ultimate satisfaction that the material environment can give. We merged our two different design practices into one object, taking this fantasy as a starting point.

Such an abstract mode of thinking, we found, allows us to erase what we know about domestic objects and opens up the possibility for re-thinking and re-creating them.  

However, in the same way, the mind gives a clear body to the fantasy by restraining the construction defines and forms a fluid shape into an ergonomic entity. 

photos: Vytautas Narkevičius

2018

It’s continuous research through sculptural objects investigating what kind of shapes and suggestive functions the human body can provide. 

It's about forms following the body and our intimate connection with a material world.

Silver, brass

2016-

This collection is part of the Museum of Applied Arts and Design (Lithuania, Vilnius) collection.

photography: Vytautas Narkevičius

to a friend whose hand I hold in my dreams

Embracing Touch is a project about the designer’s relationship with the works and the designer’s presence in them. Within our works, we give away part of ourselves. We give our intimacy for use.

Design is a matter, tangible and desirable, that carries meaning in itself, in its body. It’s what you understand and experience through physicality. It’s like a garment that you can try on, see how it looks on you. The same way you project yourself through someone else.

So behind the matter stands a designer. Do we think how much intimacy, personality he or she leaves in the design? Would it change our perception meeting the author; facing the fact that a designer is a physical body, made from flesh and blood, having certain physiology, certain volume, smell, breath? Does it create an intimate relationship with the user? And does this intimacy attract or repel? 

materials: birch plywood, plaster+sand+silicone, mdf+wool+resin 

2014

This collection is part of the Museum of Applied Arts and Design (Lithuania, Vilnius) collection.

A set of bowls designed for Form&Seek

2017

Available to order: Form&Seek/shop

Sensual body connection with a material and a shape.

Materials: maple, hard foam, rubber.

2014

a self-portrait in a chair

Having a chair in mind as an image strongly related with human I aimed to embody myself in it. I looked for ways in which I could interact with the object, transmit something that was really me, my essence. Smell or, to be more precise, an idea of a smell seemed to be a true evidence of my presence.

As a medium to capture I used almond oil. I spread oil on my skin and after cleaning it with a tissue I applied the same oil on a sanded chair.

This performative exchange made us one. A wooden chair absorbed
my tangibility. I could see myself as an object and relate my body to
material environment.

2012