Designboom_ For furniture brand Masaya, Apiwat Chitapanya draws on traditional brass animal sculptures to create a quirky collection of handcrafted furniture pieces. Using the lost wax casting technique, ‘My Best Friend’ crafts elegant renderings of cats, dogs, and red-eyed tree frogs, encapsulating their distinctive quirks and forms in brass.

The sculptures double as a playful series of tables, chairs, and coat racks that evoke the unwavering bond between man and his four-legged best friend. In particular, the idea of the collection arose from a consideration of the loneliness most people felt during the long lockdown mandates — where pets were often their only companions at home.

Dogs, considered man’s best friend, inspired the initial piece of the furniture collection. Conveying the affection between man and his four-legged companion, Thailand-based designer Apiwat Chitapanya began with sculpting a pair of greyhounds from brass. Each sculpture is attached to a plush seat, with the dog’s body forming a backrest against a low stool. In a heart-warming composition, the Greyhound Chair echoes the compassionate friendship between dogs and their owners, with the two always there for one another for comfort and support.

Cats too are among the most popular homely companions, though often seen as solitary creatures seeking moments of refuge in intimate nooks around the home. Chitapanya draws on how cats can often be found napping under furniture to design the side table. In the side table, a brass feline becomes one with the table, hiding and avoiding all the commotion above while always keeping a constant look out for their human friend.

Other cats are playful and mischievous, jumping, climbing onto furniture and slapping things off the counter,’comments Apiwat Chitapanya. Translating this curious and clumsy disposition which are cat owners are accustomed to, he creates a low side table in which a cat playfully jumps off the surface, knocking off a vase on its way. The vase and the cat form the table’s fourth leg.

The final piece looks to the red-eyed tree frog — an uncommon yet still beloved pet for some — which can commonly be found clinging onto plant stems, leaping and swaying delicately between them. The designer captures this scene as a sculptural bronze coat rack where the stems form individual curving arms, with intricate amphibians found at the peaks, forming the hangers.