The Future Perfect New York’s first exhibition in 2018 celebrated new work from Dutch designer Piet Hein Eek, whose furniture was accompanied by pieces from his lighting collaboration with iconic Murano glass manufacturer Veronese. Newly commissioned furniture from Eek is on view, as well as rare historical work that Piet created in collaboration with his wife, Jeanine Eek Keizer. 

“For me collaboration is always about working with people I like,” says Eek, discussing his synergistic collaboration with Veronese, the famed Murano glass manufacturer. On paper the two entities may seem oddly suited: founded in 1931, Veronese is known for magnificent and highly polished chandeliers and design projects. By contrast, Eek is celebrated for his transformative handcrafted furniture, created primarily from discarded and leftover materials. Regardless, after meeting with the company’s creative director Ruben Jochimek, Eek found there was plenty of common ground to make something special.

“Reuben brought a box full of pieces of glass and explained that Veronese had a basement full of them. It was like finding treasure,” says Eek. “[for the lighting collection] I thought of a Meccano set, where you can put all the odd pieces together. You can put it on the wall, on the table. While it’s a design classic, it’s still quite random.”

With its convergence of classic materiality and innovation, the forward thinking collaboration involves moving parts that can be reconfigured to create custom chandeliers and lighting installations. Underlying this ingenuity is the fact that each piece consists of glass pieces handpicked by Eek from the Veronese house’s expansive archive. “Many of these pieces can never be recreated,” he adds.

Dutch designer Piet Hein Eek’s work embodies the concepts of transformation and reinvention. Spanning furniture design, architecture and fine art, Eek elevates discarded, quotidian and unorthodox materials into pieces that make a strong case for the design as art conversation.

By contrast to other designers, Piet Hein Eek’s contemporary and beautifully constructed designs are covetable, whilst conveying a clear social message. His design modus operandi is a response to mass production, design conformity, material waste and ostentation. As such, his material palette – much like the influential Arte Povera movement – has included everything from pieces collected from old wooden boats to industrial steel remnants. Piet Hein Eek wallpaper is a prime example of his talents.

Born in Holland in 1967, Piet Hein Eek made an immediate impact on the Scandinavian design world with his final exam project for the Academy for Industrial Design in Eindhoven. Simply titled Scrap Wood Cupboards, the pieces were constructed of reclaimed lumberyard wood and inspired by chance, after the designer refurbished a cupboard for his sister. At the time, Scrap Wood Cupboards caused a sensation, perceived by many as a bold reaction against the cookie cutter, the industrial and the commonplace. Scrapwood is now a sought after design of Piet Hein Eek wallpaper.

After a year of building his firm, Eek went into partnership with designer Nob Ruijgrok, forming Eek en Ruijgrok v.o.f. Eek’s most famous piece, Waste Furniture, was designed during the 1990s out of discarded products, fomenting his vision of blending skilled, technically precise design with sustainability and the nascent credo of “reuse, recycle, reuse.” Building on this process and his rising profile in the design world, Eek added an additional line Waste Waste 40×40, pixelated-looking pieces built from “leftovers from the leftovers,” with materials cut into identical squares of 40 by 40 millimeters then assembled to cover chairs, tables and benches.