12-04-2014
It wasn’t until I was writing about the designs that we are exhibiting in Milan that I realised everything we show there is inspired by the idea of ‘not throwing anything away’. Not throwing away can be achieved by using production remnants and sometimes even remnants from products made of production remnants. You can breathe new life into material that has been gathering dust in the attic, or use 100% of a plank sawn from a tree (wood that had in any case become unusable), or use old windows from demolished buildings. In short, we do what we’ve always done, without it having been an explicit goal. I only became aware of this once we had taken a good look at everything.
More important than the way in which we practise the art of not discarding things and of reusing material, is something that is possibly the least noticeable: we build on knowledge and skills from the past. Not throwing things away is usually related to recycling or not writing off material. Much more significant, though, is the fact that by living in a modern society, in which products are made or services delivered in varying combinations and at short notice, which by definition goes together with fleeting contacts and interrupted processes, we see a great deal of our efforts going up in smoke.
For us, nothing has been lost, because virtually everything that we have ever undertaken, thought up, learned, made or bought was for us, and every investment, in whatever area, has the chance to mature and to yield something when the time is right. The Scrap Wood Cabinet, devised in 1989, is still in the collection and every year we sell dozens of them. As for the Oak Display Case – first made in 1993 and put into production again around 2000 – we make more of them every year. The way in which the found glass was fixed during construction of this display case caused us to think just as long about a similar case made of steel. It wasn’t until now, 20 years later, that the time finally came. The solution was so childishly simple that you’re tempted to ask yourself why so much time had to go by before solving the problem.
The products that we present this year have thus been created with the baggage of 20 years of working and fitting things into our tradition of not throwing anything away – whether material or knowledge or energy. It’s a tradition that has delivered a series of products that you could classify as classics or icons.
Download here the PDF of the exhibition in Milan.
These products are going to be presented:
- Tree Trunk Table and Tree Trunk Chair – new design
- Steel vitrine – new design
- Old Window Display Cabinet – new design
- 40 x 40 Furniture – newest designs
- Crisis Cabinet
- Stamped dishes
- Milled bowls
- byBorre x Piet Hein Eek – silk quilts
This post is also available in: NL
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