Japanese design studio A.P.Works playfully mimics the imagery of Albert Einstein’s space-time fabric theory with this mind-bending placemat. By warping the grid pattern, the trick mat creates the illusion that the plate and silverware are weighing down the placemat’s seemingly elastic surface, in the same way that planets and stars distort the plane of space-time. The silkscreen-on-twill design is currently only a prototype, but these images certainly delight the perspective with their minimalist distillation of astrophysical concepts.
