Maarten Baas Clay Furniture

I like the playful nature of Maarten Baas’ furniture designs. The most immediately striking designs are in his “clay furniture” series (bench shown below). These pieces have a metal skeleton and clay skin, which is applied by hand.

There’s also the “smoke” series which involves torching some wood furniture, then putting out the flames and coating the remnants in a clear epoxy coating. There’s a video of an exhibit for this series (Works->Smoke… sorry, can’t link to it!) It looks like he torched some pretty desirable piece of furniture, including the drawers by Tejo Remy for Droog…

The juxtaposition of the Clay and Smoke series is interesting unto itself. It’s like pitting a child’s mashed potato sculpture against a honed craftsman’s produce.