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“It’s literally the simplest thing there is,” says Dutch artist and designer Willem van Hooff of the theme of ripping, a creative act he was inspired to explore by his little cousin after watching her gleefully rip up a puzzle book. In his spacious Eindhoven studio at Sectie-C (a former factory turned creative hub), he holds a miniature model of the purposefully unbalanced wooden chair from his Ripped Wood collection. Crafted from a fallen tree van Hooff found near his home after a storm, its low seat and slab-shaped back are reminiscent of Eames’s LCW chair. The exposed bark edges, preserved with lacquer, are a noticeable, textured point of difference.
“Tearing is an uncontrolled process,” he says. de Hooffof a way of making where the result is always a surprise. Ripped Metal, his collection of aluminum and steel furniture, features eye-catching breaks laser-cut in a factory. But he takes a different approach with his growing series of Ripped Ceramics: clay stools, tables and vases that look completely unique. “I like that a lot of ideas come from naive moments in life,” he says of his experiments with aesthetics. Speaker sets, bowls and shelves are next.
“Imperfection is a celebration of uniqueness,” agrees the Vienna-based designer. Anna Zimmermann of her own Vessels of Imperfection cast in aluminium. Long fascinated by metal casting, she often felt intimidated (and scorned) by the male-dominated workshops in Vienna where she had tried to pick up skills. Then a friend introduced her to local craftsman Martin Petermann, who spent about nine months helping her make the six-piece collection in a metal foundry. “I can remember two occasions when the craftsmen cut out the imperfection,” she says, laughing. “They thought it was a mistake.” For Zimmermann, as for other creatives, the look is more than mere embellishment – it shows off the beauty of the creation itself.
Last year, Willem Zwiers For her graduation project at the Design Academy Eindhoven, she used an air compressor to inflate two clay slabs (placed in a traditional lamp-shaped mold) like a cartoon balloon. “I didn’t really want to cut it,” she says of the lamp’s jagged edges, which are imprinted with wood grain from the mold. “I find it quite beautiful that you can see how it’s made.” They caught the attention of Rossana Orlandiwho exhibited them during Milan Design Week in spring.
Renate Voswho lives in Loevestein, a medieval castle in the Netherlands, also refrains from removing the edges of his handmade LOEV vases, made from cork, natural pigment and silicone. “Imperfection was a gift that delightfully deceives the viewer,” he says. “The vase should look hard and cold, but instead it appears warm and soft.”
Based in Seoul Sundo Yoon Yoon takes the idea of imperfection even further with his aluminum furniture series, Cure. First exhibited at Seoul’s ADM Gallery in 2022, the laser-cut chairs and side table feature scratches made with an electric grinder. By creating the tactile scratches, Yoon also discovered a way to calm his brain, as he found it easier to focus more on the grinder than his own flaws, something he had struggled to do in the past. “Amidst loud noises and small pieces of metal bouncing around my body, I had to focus on one thing instead of thinking negatively,” he says.
Some imperfections also inspire brief moments of levity. Rosh Mahtani, founder and creative director of the London-based jewelry brand AlighieriShe considers her bronze bottle opener shaped like a crustacean with tangled legs to be “something from the world of Dali.” She is no stranger to imperfection, given her work with the ancient craft of sand casting, and loves the texture of such objects. Her heavy, gold-plated brass lobster, part of a line of home goods that launched this summer, also invites touch.
For the Eindhoven-based designer Joost van BleiswijkShredding provides a sense of immediacy, imbuing objects with soul. Fed up with the “super-clean” aesthetic of his No Screw No Glue collection, he grabbed a blowtorch and a thick steel plate and started shredding in 2010. “If you see a personal touch on things, an act, it makes something feel unique,” he says. What’s next? “Shredding and deforming all kinds of metals.”