“It is literally the simplest thing ever,” says the Dutch artist and designer Willem van Hooff on the subject of ripping, a creative act that his toddler cousin inspired him to explore after he observed her gleefully tearing up a puzzle book.
In his sprawling Eindhoven studio in Sectie-C – a former factory-turned-creative hub – he holds up a miniature model of the purposely unbalanced wood chair from his Ripped Wood collection.
Crafted from a fallen tree that van Hooff found near his home after a storm, its low seat and slab-like back recall the Eames LCW chair. The exposed bark edges, preserved with lacquer, are a notable, textural point of difference.
“Ripping is an uncontrolled process,” says van Hooff, of a way of making where the outcome is always a surprise. Ripped Metal, his collection of aluminium and steel furniture, features eye-popping ruptures laser-cut in a factory.
But he has a different approach with his growing series of Ripped Ceramics – clay stools, tables and vases that feel wholly unique. “I like that a lot of ideas come from naïve moments in life,” he says of his experiments with the aesthetic. Speaker sets, bowls and shelves are next.
Artist and designer Willem van Hooff
“The imperfection is a celebration of uniqueness,” agrees Vienna-based designer Anna Zimmermann of her own aluminium-cast Vessels of Imperfection.
Long fascinated by metal casting, she often felt intimidated (and snubbed) by the male-dominated workshops in Vienna, where she had tried to garner skills. Then a friend introduced her to local craftsman Martin Petermann, who spent around nine months helping her make the six-piece collection at a metal foundry.
“I can recall two occasions when the craftspeople cut off the imperfection,” she says, laughing. “They thought it was a mistake.” For Zimmermann, like other creatives, the look is more than mere adornment – it shows the beauty of creation itself.
Last year, Willem Zwiers used an air compressor to blow up two slabs of clay (held in a mould shaped like a traditional lamp) like a cartoon balloon for his graduation project at Design Academy Eindhoven.
“I really didn’t want to cut it away,” he says of the lamp’s serrated edges, which are imprinted with wood grains from the mould.
“I find it quite beautiful that you see how it’s made.” They caught the eye of Rossana Orlandi, who showcased them during Design Week in Milan in spring.
Renate Vos, who lives in Loevestein, a medieval castle in the Netherlands, similarly refrains from stripping the edges off her hand-cast LOEV vases, made of cork, natural pigment and silicone.
“The imperfection was a gift that delightfully misleads the viewer,” she says. “The vase should look hard and cold, but instead appears warm and soft.”
Seoul-based Sundo Yoon takes the idea of imperfection even further with his aluminium furniture series, Cure.
First shown at Seoul’s ADM Gallery in 2022, the laser-cut chairs and side table feature scratches made by an electrical grinder. In creating the tactile scrapes Yoon also discovered a way to quiet his brain, finding it easier to focus more on the grinder instead of his own flaws, which he’s struggled to do in the past.
“In the midst of loud noises and small pieces of metal bouncing around my body, I had to focus on one thing rather than thinking negatively,” he says.
Some imperfections also inspire brief moments of levity. Rosh Mahtani, the founder and creative director of London-based jewellery brand Alighieri, views her bronze crustacean bottle opener with snaggy legs as “something out of the Dalí world”.
No stranger to imperfection, given her work with the ancient craft of sand casting, she loves the tactility of such objects. Her weighty gold-plated-brass lobster, part of a homeware line that launched this summer, similarly invites users’ touch.
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For the Eindhoven-based designer Joost van Bleiswijk, ripping 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 to things, an act, it causes something to feel unique,” he says. What’s next? “Crushing and deforming all kinds of metals.”
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