Memphis avant garde "cactus" coaster set

There is a particular pleasure in an object that refuses to be only one thing. Designed by Clive Roddy, the British creator and designer who has made a practice of finding forms that are simultaneously useful and quietly absurd, this cactus coaster set belongs to a lineage of thinking that runs from the Memphis movement's rejection of purely functional design through to the contemporary appetite for objects that bring genuine joy to the surfaces they occupy. Six interlocking discs of deep forest green engineered wood, each a slightly different size, each cut into the rounded paddle shapes of an opuntia cactus in full silhouette, slot together along a central birch plywood stem and stand upright in a terracotta pot whose warm burnt-orange body is as formally satisfying as a well-thrown piece of studio ceramics. Assembled, the stack reads immediately and delightfully as a cactus: a sculptural desktop ornament that earns its place on a shelf, a desk, or a dining table sideboard through the simple authority of a good idea executed with precision. Disassembled, the six discs become water-resistant coasters of varying diameters, ready to protect any surface with the same quiet competence they display as sculpture.