Artist Matthew Day Jackson has developed a Formica surface that subtly replicates the surface of the moon and used it to make furniture.
Presented during Milan design week, the Kolho dining table and chairs feature curvy cartoonish wood frames. But if you look closely, the surface material of the seat has a gentle texture that mimics, to scale, the ground surface of the moon.
Jackson created this surface by developing a new variety of Formica, the wipe-clean laminate material commonly used for cafe furniture in the 1960s and 70s.

The series is the result of a collaboration between Jackson, Finnish design manufacturer Made by Choice and the Formica Group.
Jackson, who has long used Formica laminate in his artwork, decided out of curiosity to visit the factory on a visit to Finland in 2018. By chance, he also met Niclas Ahlstro?m, who founded Helsinki-based furniture company Made by Choice in 2015. They decided to work together on a collection of furniture that would utilise a Formica laminate designed by Jackson and developed at the plant. It is called Kolho, because that is the town where the factory is located.

To make the series, the Formica Group developed bespoke steel press-plates to create a textured laminate at 80 microns (or 0.08 millimetres) in depth, which is a scale representation of the surface of the far side of the moon.
The texture is derived from images taken from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter in 2009, launched in honour of the 40th anniversary ...