Photography by Maarten van Houten

Dutch designer Maarten Baas was born in Arnsberg, Germany but spent most of his childhood in The Netherlands. After graduating from the Design Academy Eindhoven in 2002 Baas developed two concepts. One of them was the Smoke series, for which Baas charred furniture and treated the torched skeletons with a coating, turning them into usable pieces of furniture again.

Each piece is literally burned, after which they are preserved in a clear epoxy coating. Except for three baroque products, which are reproduced by the Dutch label Moooi, all Smoke products come from the Baas & den Herder studio in The Netherlands. Since 2004 Moss and Maarten Baas collaborate on the Where There’s Smoke… series, a Smoke collection of well-known design classics of Rietveld, Eames and Gaudi.

In 2005 Baas began collaborating with Bas den Herder, who is now responsible for the production and development of almost all of Maarten’s designs. The founding of studio Baas & den Herder made it possible to further create Maarten’s unique, handmade pieces and to produce them on a larger scale. This new collaboration also allowed Baas to take on even more ambitious projects for hotels, restaurants, galleries, museums and private commissioners such as the Gramercy Park Hotel where he worked with Ian Schrager’s design team supplying diverse, specially made Smoke pieces for the rooms and the lobby of the hotel.

Maarten approaches design without knowledge of, or care for, predisposed boundaries and finds his cause in undertaking new experiments. This free-thinking method of approach is evident in everything Baas creates.

To see more of his work, click here.