Maarten Baas (1978) went to the Design Academy Eindhoven in 1996. While still in school, his first design was already put into production: the Knuckle candlestick.
He then graduated in June 2002 with two concepts: the now generally known Smoke and Clay series. The Smoke series involved Baas burning furniture and then treating it with a coating to turn them into perfectly useable pieces of furniture again. The Smoke series has been purchased for various permanent collections of leading museums from all over the world (Victoria & Albert Museum, Groninger Museum, and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts) and is still included in the Moooi series. In 2004 he had an exhibition in New York (Where There’s Smoke), showing 25 burnt pieces of furniture, including designs by Rietveld and Gaudí.
The furniture from the Clay series has a metal skeleton and has been made from industrial clay. Maarten Baas designed a number of new Clay furniture models especially for the Mendini restaurant in the Groninger Museum. All pieces are made by hand in the Maarten Baas studio. Thanks to the handmade production, all pieces are unique.
Baas has designed clocks in movie format, a number of which are exhibited in museums, and also available on DVD, in addition to being released as iPhone/iPad-Apps.
Portret photo by Kenton Thatcher
