Maarten Baas - Design New York Wednesday, May 25, 2011 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Moss, New York

  • Literature

    Laurie Manfra, “Maarten Baas: Furniture Iconoclast,” American Craft, October/November 2007, pp. 52-53; Tom Dixon, et al., &Fork, New York, 2007, pp. 26-27; Adam Lindemann, Collecting Design, Cologne, 2010, the front cover and pp. 262-263

  • Catalogue Essay

    Dutch designer Maarten Baas combines crude materials and bright surfaces to joyous effect. His lacquered “Clay” chairs, first exhibited at Milan’s Salone del Mobile in 2006, are a spirited departure from “Where There’s Smoke,” his dark nativity. Those earlier appropriated works, which Baas had scorched
    with acetylene, celebrated wrack and ruin. Touched by hand, not fire, “Clay” represents a reversal of sorts: Baas builds up rather than tears down a wide range of furniture — chairs, tables, beds. In close collaboration with Bas den Herder, his studio fabricator, Baas hand-models industrial clay around the metal skeleton of each piece. “I also am formed out of clay,” said Elihu to Job — an age-old metaphor. Baas enlivens skin and bones with one of eight standard lacquers. But beyond color and materials, nothing is standard. Each chair dances its own way.

96

Six “Clay” chairs

2006-2007
Painted synthetic clay, metal.
Tallest: 28 3/4 in. (73 cm.) high
Handmade by Baas & den Herder, The Netherlands. Each chair back inset with metal lettering “BAAS,” the undersides of three signed in marker with “Maarten/februari ’07,” two with “Maarten/Septembre ‘06” and one with “June ‘0[obscured]/Maarten” (6).

Estimate
$12,000 - 18,000 

Sold for $15,000

Design

25 May 2011
New York