About Butiken Republiken

Shipping worldwide, Butiken Republiken is a store, featuring unique design objects, stylish lamps and sculptural building kits (Polygo), and selected vintage objects. We also invite creatives for collaborations and organize workshops where you can create marvelous light sculptures.

 

 

 

Butiken Republiken is a design gallery with several departments: 

 

Objects at Butiken Republiken: Handpicked, Curated, Fair and Environmentally friendly 

When we started Butiken Republiken in December 2015, our aim was to create the type of shop that we ourselves would like to visit; one that has passion in the things that are sold and where each item is chosen for a reason. That’s why we select the items that we sell very carefully, and we only sell things that we really love and would like to have in our own home.  

We put in effort to curate the objects that we sell. We usually present our objects in a setting that inspires us mixing new and vintage items. Someone might call this eclectic. We think that in most homes, there is a natural mix of new, old, gifts, inherited things, borrowed, found, trades and bought. That is what gives the home soul and character and uniqueness of the inhabitants.  The Swedish/Austrian designer Joseph Frank said; 'It does not matter if you mix old and new, different furniture styles, colors and patterns. Things that matter to you, however, will transform into a harmonized unity.

We believe in selling objects that are fairly produced with minimum impact on the environment. How we do that will be further explained below. 

 

 

By Republiken 

With the signature By Republiken we design and create objects. 

We design and build lamps and objects. Primarly using our take on the building system Polygo. Polygo is more than a beautiful product; it also a way to learn and get fascinated about geometrics.

 

The Polygo building pieces is a bit like LEGO, you can assemble the pieces, and then easily disassemble the pieces. This means that if you get one of our Polygo lamps but later want another type of lamp, you can disassemble your lamp and build a new model that suits you (by your own design or following one of our instructions for our designed lamps). 

By Republiken has also designed and are producing the furniture jewelry Knight in Shining Armor which is a precision cut silver piece based on the Koch snow flake fractals. Use it to contrast and highlight the beauty of patinated structures on old furniture or as a playful way to resurface, divide and protect the surfaces of your furniture. Currently only available in sterling silver and brass, but more material options are in the pipeline.

 

Republiken Vintage

Butiken Republiken sells selected vintage furniture and objects because we love everything about the whole concept from being very environmentally friendly, the uniqueness, the cultural heritage and the storytelling. An old item carries a cultural heritage. Except for just being for example just a good-looking chair, a vintage chair will also tell you something about the style that was in fashion and the techniques that was used at the time. It may also have a little wear from the previous owner/s, or a careful mending which tells you that this item has been preloved. Sometimes there is anecdotes about the objects and the previous owners following with the item.

The number of vintage objects are limited due to natural causes; they are no longer produced and the existing items diminishes with time. This means that the vintage furniture and objects often are quite or completely unique. Buying an object that is second hand, is doing the environment a very good favor, you consume something that is already produced instead of producing a new one. And, the second-hand value is usually the same or higher if you would like to sell your item at the later stage. -Invest in vintage goods!

 

Friends of Republiken 

At Friends of Republiken we collaborate with other artists and designers and sell their pieces. We have chosen to collaborate with these artists and designers because we admire their work and their work philosophies. These friends include the artist Devon Reid who disassemble, mix, and reassemble stuffed plush toys, the jewelry designer Mira Erkens Lindroth at Mira & Mira who design innovative jewelry and household products in silver, Olle Bjerkås which is also a member of Fraktalfabriken, who has made the ingenious Icodecaro lamp,  the ceramic artist Linus Ersson, who made the exquisite porcelain series Fingerprints for us, the furniture designer Gen Ishikawa who has his aluminum Checker table and wooden GI-lamp at Butiken Republiken, Anna Lilleengen who takes magically fascinating pictures of the wilderness and the textile artist Malin Bobeck who made the handtufted rugs with incorporated fiber optics. 

Butiken Republiken salutes creativity!

To create and play are natural and important for mankind, true for all ages. We want to encourage creativity for kids, adolescents and grown-ups. Kids are naturally very creative, but with increasing age, duties and passive entertainment (school, after school classes, TV, games, etc) there is less time to create spontaneously. Butiken Republiken has building kits where you can choose your level of creativity. It is easy to start building your own design, but if you want a helping hand, you can follow our instructions to build one of our designed figures and forms.

We organize lots of different building workshops for kids, grown-ups, teambuildings, etc. It is such a pleasure for us to see people come together and create and make with these building pieces.

 

We sell Polygo, Strawbees and Pipecraft (formerly Strabees MEGA) 

What is in common for all the building kits that we sell is that only imagination sets the limits for what you can build with them!

 

Stay tuned because there is a lot more ideas to materialize from Republiken.

 

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Our office is located in Grythyttan, Sweden