FURNITURE
When Stockholm's Nationalmuseum reopened after its full renovation, it needed furniture that could hold sculptures and busts from a national collection without drawing attention away from them. String Furniture and TAF Studio answered with the Museum NM&.045, a console shelf slender enough to disappear beneath the objects it carries and strong enough to hold them for decades. That commission has since grown into a full family of freestanding pieces, and for 2026 TAF Studio added two more: the Museum Trolley and the Museum Pedestal.
TAF Studio was founded in Stockholm in 2002 by Gabriella Lenke and Mattias Stahlbom, and their work now sits in the permanent collections of the Nationalmuseum and the Danish Design Museum in Copenhagen. The Museum series carries their signature move: taking components from industrial environments, the beams and brackets originally made only to function, and refining them until they read as furniture. Every piece in the collection shares the same fine textured coated aluminum, so a shelf, a trolley and a candle holder in the same room speak one material language.
Where It Started: Museum NM&.045
The Museum NM&.045 is the piece TAF Studio designed for the Nationalmuseum itself, and it still holds works of art in the museum's cafe and restaurant. It is a wall-mounted console shelf in fine textured coated aluminum and steel, 11" wide, 9.4" deep and 3.1" tall, rated to carry 22 lbs spread evenly. That capacity in a ledge barely 3" tall is the engineering the museum commission demanded, carried unchanged into a piece for the home.
At home it works at hallway scale: a landing ledge for keys inside the door, a floating bedside shelf where the 9.4" depth clears a tight bedroom, or a display ledge for the one ceramic piece that deserves a wall to itself. In beige or white the shelf recedes and lets the object lead; in orange or dark brown it becomes part of the composition, and the aluminum finish shows the material doing the work.
Museum Trolley: The Collection Learns to Move
The Museum Trolley is a two-level piece in fine textured coated aluminum, 29.3" long, 9.4" deep and 30.5" tall. It stands on two fixed legs and one set of nylon wheels, with a solid handle at the wheeled end. Tip the handle side and it rolls; set it down and it stays exactly where you put it.
That geometry is what makes it useful all day. Parked beside the sofa it holds books and a portable lamp, behind the dining table it stages glasses and plates within reach of the host's chair, and at 9.4" deep it slips into the gap between a sofa arm and the wall that most rooms waste. The two levels carry up to 44 lbs spread evenly, which covers a full bar setup or a week of reading without complaint.
If you entertain, load the top level as a bar before guests arrive and roll it to wherever the evening settles. See the Museum Trolley in all six finishes.
Museum Pedestal: A Plinth for One Object
The Museum Pedestal is the museum idea distilled to its smallest form: a cast aluminum plinth, 6" wide, 6" deep and 11.8" tall, with an I-beam profile scaled down from the structural steel that inspired the whole series. It does what a plinth has always done in a gallery. Lift an object a foot off the surface it sits on, and the eye starts treating it as something worth looking at.
String suggests it as a table centrepiece, inside a bookshelf for the most personal objects, or under the plant that deserves the windowsill's best light. Turned on its side in a bookcase it works just as well as a book stand, the I-beam web holding a short row of spines upright. The right way to buy it is to pick the object you already own and never notice anymore, and give it the pedestal.
Museum Sidetable: One Table, Many Heights
The Museum Sidetable is where TAF's industrial reference is easiest to spot: the rear post that carries the shelf is a beam profile, the kind of component a construction site would use without a second thought. The table stands 30.1" tall overall in aluminum and steel, and the 9.4" x 11.8" shelf adjusts anywhere from 12.6" to 28.7" off the floor, holding up to 22 lbs.
Set high, the shelf sits at sofa-arm height beside a lounge chair; set low, it becomes a plant stand or a landing spot beside the bed. In a condo living room where the furniture gets rearranged every couple of years, the Sidetable re-specifies itself instead of getting replaced.
Museum Candleholder: The Series at Candle Scale
The Museum Candleholder brings the same engineering language down to the scale of a single taper. It stands 15.7" tall in fine textured coated aluminum and steel, with an adjustable holder that lets you position the candle rather than simply accept where it sits. The matte aluminum reads as machined and exact, and the live flame plays against that precision every evening it burns.
On a dining table it reads as sculpture between meals and as candlelight during them. On an open shelf it gives a run of books and objects a vertical accent, and in dark brown or green it holds its own against dark-stained timber and deep-toned upholstery.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is it called the Museum collection?
Because it started in one. TAF Studio was commissioned to design parts of the interior for the renovated Nationalmuseum in Stockholm, including the Museum NM&.045 console shelf for String Furniture, which holds sculptures and busts from the museum's collections. The family of freestanding pieces grew from that commission.
How much weight can the Museum Trolley hold?
Up to 44 lbs spread evenly across the two levels. In practice that covers a full drinks setup, a stack of art books, or a cluster of potted plants. The fine textured coated aluminum construction keeps the trolley itself light enough to move with one hand.
Is the Museum Sidetable height adjustable?
Yes. The shelf adjusts from 12.6" to 28.7" off the floor on the beam-profile rear post, with the table standing 30.1" tall overall. That range takes it from a low plant stand to sofa-arm and bedside height, and the shelf carries up to 22 lbs.
What colours does the Museum collection come in?
The pieces share one palette: black, white, beige, dark brown, green and orange, with availability varying slightly by piece. The Trolley and Pedestal come in six finishes, and the NM&.045 shelf swaps green for a bare aluminum option. Because the finishes match across the family, pieces bought years apart still read as one set.
The Museum collection is one idea worked through at different scales: take the components of industrial construction, refine the proportions, and let them hold the things people care about. The NM&.045 fixes that idea to the wall, the Trolley moves it around the room, the Pedestal concentrates it on a single object, the Sidetable adjusts it to whatever height the room asks for, and the Candleholder carries it down to a single flame. For a company that has been building on Nisse and Kajsa Strinning's 1949 shelving idea ever since, it is a natural extension of the String story.
If you are deciding between finishes or planning how the Museum pieces sit alongside a String System wall, our in-house design team works with clients across Canada on single pieces through to full room plans.
Featured in this story
