Piet Hein Eek — Scrapwood collection

Designer: Piet Hein Eek

Piet Hein Eek was born in Hol­land in 1967 and was grad­u­ated from the Acad­emy for Indus­trial Design in Eind­hoven in 1990. While at the Acad­emy, he gained atten­tion for his exam project Scrap Wood Cup­boards. He sold all of the cup­boards and used the money to start his own design stu­dio in 1992. The fol­low­ing year he went into part­ner­ship with fel­low designer Nob Rui­jrok, estab­lish­ing Eek en Rui­j­grok v.o.f.

Eek first devel­oped an inter­est in old mate­ri­als after restor­ing a cup­board for his sis­ter; he thought the old wood looked nicer than the new. He has built his busi­ness around old mate­ri­als, sav­ing these dis­carded pieces of wood and work­ing out­side of the cir­cuit of mass pro­duc­tion. His work is sold in numer­ous gal­leries world­wide. He has exhib­ited at such venues as the Museum of Mod­ern Art, New York; the Milan Fur­ni­ture Fair, Italy; and Cïbone, Tokyo.

Scrap­wood collection

He turned his atten­tion to sim­ple, read­ily avail­able mate­ri­als and began work­ing with con­struc­tion tech­niques that exposed the cre­ation process, rather than hide it. His first scrap wood cup­board, designed in 1990, was his first attempt on his mis­sion to cre­ate beauty from waste wood. The rich patina of past wear-and-tear on the wood’s sur­face con­fi­dently cel­e­brated the material’s pre­vi­ous life, but for many it was per­ceived as a lit­teral attempt at eco-design. A log­i­cal pro­gres­sion saw the intro­duc­tion of var­i­ous new sizes in the fur­ni­ture range.

Con­tact: Mal­her and Hérold

All the prod­ucts are avail­able in other col­ors and sizes. Prices on demand.