Header: Katarzyna Kajdan
Wool is a strange candidate for a coffee table: it compresses under weight, drapes instead of standing and belongs on the body or the bed, not under a cup of coffee. Nonetheless, Afterimage is indeed a low table by Polish designer Katarzyna Hofman of Kas Hofman Studio.
Working with wool
The trick is in the material itself, which Hofman developed on her own: leftover fibres of felting wool locked inside clear epoxy resin. Once the resin hardens, the fibres stop behaving like normal textiles, stiffening instead into the body of the table itself. The mixture becomes both the skeleton and the skin, creating a bent piece of 85 x 60 x 32 cm that needs no frame, no legs, nor joinery of any kind.
Hofman had tested this pairing once before, as a furniture design student at the University of Fine Arts in Poznań. A long detour followed: further studies in Berlin and in Bali, then fifteen years in the furniture trade, nine of them spent in Indonesia making high-end pieces for the home. When she moved back to Poland and opened her own studio, she took the old experiment out of the drawer.
The making of Afterimage
Every table is made by hand. Hofman lays the wool down layer by layer, choosing where each tuft of fibre goes, then floods the arrangement with resin when happy with it. The finished tables never look the same, as the transparent resin shows the fibres: how they are placed, which way they face, how thick they are, and so on. Put simply, this means that no two tables can ever match.
Photo credit: Katarzyna Kajdan
Wool, epoxy and light
The name for the table was not chosen randomly, having actually been inspired by the effect of daylight on the resin. Because the material is transparent, daylight sinks into the table and makes the bands of yellow, blue and brown glow and softly blur into one another. The effect recalls an afterimage, the ghost of a bright shape that stays on the retina after you close your eyes. The Polish title, Powidoki, says the same thing.
It was because the wool is offcut material, waste from felting given a second career, that the table joined NO SPACE FOR WASTE, an exhibition on reuse and circular making held at the Isola Design Festival in Milan from 20 to 26 April 2026.
Project information
Design Company: Kas Hofman Studio
Lead Designer: Katarzyna Hofman
Location: Poland
Date: 2026
