By Editor Design.nl /asdf 28-01-2010

Some translated excerpts from an interview between Maarten Baas (31) who was recently selected as "2009 Designer of the Year" in Miami and de Volkskrant journalist Margreet Vermeulen on 26 January 2010.

Your Smoke-series is actually quite beautiful ….

“What the heck!” Peaceful Maarten Baas is clearly upset. “I seriously think everything I make is beautiful. If burning would have resulted in ugly furniture I would immediately have stopped. I ám in search of beauty. Most design furniture is too macho for my taste. Everything is symmetrical, polished, strong, shiny. They call it perfection, preferably designed by a computer. If that’s what you strive for, every new design goes in the same direction.”

Your definition of beauty?

“Beauty is where everything is tolerated, where everything comes together. That’s why nature is beautiful. Nothing is straight or symmetrical. Our common definition of perfection just makes things vulnerable. One scratch on an expensive car and it looks horrible. Compare that to nature. It just ís. Even a discarded coke can is accepted by nature. It just starts rusting and things overgrow it. Everything is possible.”

Baas grew up in small villages in Zeeland, where his mother was a teacher and his father a minister. But he prefers to call him a philosopher: “He was not a conservative minister in black robes telling people what they were and weren’t allowed to do. He wanted to help people to develop their own truth. Also his children. We were free to find our own way.”

But children of a minister have to set an example. 



“Of course everybody looked at us. My older brother and I had long hair in a tail. That was quite a thing in a village with 200 people. My brother drove around in old cars and when I played drums my father would join in on the piano. My father didn’t want to adjust and we didn’t have to either.”



Did you go to church?



"Every Sunday morning there was a battle between television and church, usually the answer was church. It was more of a problem for my mother if we hadn’t gone to church. When I was 13 my parents divorced and church was finished. I didn’t see the divorce as a drama, but responses in the village were strong. Then you realise people ascribe supernatural powers to a minister. Others could be weak, but not him.”



Perfection is a theme that often returns in conversations with Maarten Baas. His designs stand out because they’re everything but perfect in a traditional sense. 

“I prefer a chest when it’s a bit unstable and clumsy. I like to explore new borders. Enter areas I haven’t entered before. Where no one entered before.”

Why do you work for the happy few?



"I don’t like mass production. For museums and collectors you can make things that require more time to think. And ‘the happy few’ is a bit of an exaggeration: in museums everybody can see my work.”



You want to make as few concessions as possible? 



“You always have to make concessions. But to make things affordable you often have to change the materials or the concept. I don’t like to do that. Then I’d rather see things become expensive. Unfortunately. And I don’t like to ‘shit’ a new collection every year. To have to be hot and trendy and hip all the time. Working for collectors makes it possible to shift accents. People that buy my work are ‘soul mates’ in a way. They recognise the humour. My work has a certain lightness, without becoming superficial. Then again, the world of collectors has its downside too. In the end it’s just business. Some millionaires only want to buy your work as an investment. It’s decadent as well. Parties where everybody arrives in a private jet while the theme is ‘green design’. Green design my arse.



“I have a hard time coping with these sorts of things. But then again, it’s fabulous when an influential collector like Adam Lindemann buys your stuff and actually understands it. Or says: please redecorate my living room as you wish. He could have used that money to build a fuck-off swimming pool in his house.



“Have I been lucky? I emphasise positive things in my life. But I can put it in a different light as well. My parents weren’t warm and they separated. At the Design Academy in Eindhoven, I didn’t know what to do for the first few years. I was too experimental. Others presented their work with sleek pictures and fake-philosophical texts; I just threw all my ideas, sketches pictures on one big pile without any explanation. I was totally wrong.  I’ve had to learn to keep one leg in the mainstream. If you have a design that’s different, don’t try to make the presentation revolutionary as well. It was hard, although it might have looked like fun from the outside.

“Some say I was lucky with my graduation project ‘Smoke’ becoming an instant hit. But everybody at the academy gets similar opportunities. My work got responses from all over the world. If so many people who are independent from each other appreciate your work, that’s not ‘luck’ but it means you did a good job. Besides, I’ve continued to make good work all on my own. That’s not luck. It’s hard work.”

Your best friend says you’re not really good at making things with your hands. 



“That’s right. Two left hands. Still now. Others have to finish my products.”



Isn’t that hard to admit as a designer? 



“Frustrating sometimes, especially at the academy. As long as your designs were made sleek, you didn’t have to be creative and could still pass exams. I’m too chaotic to make sleek designs. Too impatient as well. I have the end product in my mind but am incapable of making it. The result was I failed exams every now and then.

“It took a long time before I realised I functioned differently than the other students around me. They always wanted to just make things in their workshops. I already had a workshop of my own when I finally realised I’m not a ‘do-er’, that I’d rather be on the internet or talking to customers. The buzz surrounding design is more interesting to me than actually making an object. That’s why I work with Bas den Herder. Thanks to him the products are finished. I design a clumsy chest, he makes the drawer open and close smoothly. You need that professional touch.”

You asked 60,000 euros for the Grandfather Clock, bought by the Rijksmuseum. What makes the clock so expensive?



“Often it’s about the number of hours, including the hours working on the failures preceding a successful product. The Grandfather Clock was made in a limited edition of just three. There are three products which makes me a maximum of only 180,000 euros, while making them was a hell of a job.”

Where did you get the idea of using a film as a clock?



“I was waiting on an aeroplane once and playing with my laptop when I saw a clip of Bob Dylan playing Subterranean Homesick Blues. Dylan has a pile of cardboard signs with words from the lyrics. While singing he rhythmically throws away the signs with the words. That’s where I got the idea of using movement - action as symbol for the passage of time. It was intuitive. An endless number of images go through my mind. Some stay.”



You like to make “disorganizing” design. What needs to be "disorganised"? 



“I like to rearrange all the pigeon holes people have in their minds. Quite a few traditional designers attack me because I’m not working in the mainstream, but am just making a few limited editions on the sidelines of the “real” design world. They say I’m a “wannabe artist”. They’re annoyed because I can play around with clay and still make a living. All of a sudden this is no longer “design”. Well whatever. Why does everything have to be defined? Let’s leave some space. In that sense I’ve copy/pasted my fathers philosophy. He never wanted to “plant the truth” in people either.”



You’ve been hip for quite a few years. Aren’t you afraid it might one day be finished?



“That would be OK by me. Actually, I’ve always considered the possibility. Every time I think: I can’t become more well-known than I already am. I’m not flamboyant like Marcel Wanders. But then again, things keep moving further and further step by step.”

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