SG: How did you come to design?

PHE: When I was in school I already knew I wanted to produce my own furniture. After I got my degree in 1990, I had to go to military service, so we waited until 1993 to start. From that moment on we worked on creating a collection and a brand and activities that are recognizable. During the years we developed a whole collection, and over time—in Holland at least—it became sort of a brand. People wanted to have something of Piet Hein Eek. And they were not talking about me as a person, but as a business.

We always went to the fairs in Holland in order to be better known by the people themselves, instead of only the design-interested part of the population. That worked out very well. We settled the brand in Holland and we live on our activities there.

We were doing customized work, which can be the most beautiful way to work since everyone is constantly coming up with new ideas. I liked it very much but at a certain moment we found that everyone got overworked and overloaded with too many deadlines. We had to build in some routine, both in the organization and in the work itself. So we started internationally four years ago in order to sell more of each piece. That works out quite well. Now we just have to learn to cope with the growth.

SG: So, prior to design school in Eindhoven, did you have an interest in carpentry or woodwork?

PHE: Yes, from the time I was little I was always making things like lamps and cabinets and houses with matches. I was always gluing things together. It was a hobby.

SG: And were you interested in working with scrap material when you were making these things?

PHE: The scrap is a new thought for me. I see something I like and start thinking of all the possibilities for how it could be used. If I go for a walk in the woods I always come back with plastic bags full of pieces of the forest. It's about seeing materials and techniques that are available for design, but not being used for that purpose. Scrap wood could be gold. It could be everything.

SG: Looking at the range of your work, it's hard to tell if there's a unifying “look.” Is there one “Piet Hein Eek?"

PHE: I think there is. It’s like a feeling.

SG: Do the materials determine the form then?

PHE: It’s the character of the material, the quality of it; and I don’t mean in terms of how it appears, but the way you can handle it and which machine you use. The combination of the technique and the material often gives a logical end result. But these are always split second ideas, even if they are very complicated. The trick is to keep that idea.

SG: So now that you're trying this international approach where everything is replicable, do you think more in terms of product than concept?

PHE: Yeah, I really want to produce. We started in 1993 with art. Throughout the 90s I had solo exhibitions in Europe. But that’s free work, as I call it. I just make it for myself, I don’t make it to sell. The furniture and objects that I make they should be made in quantities. Some dealers and people ask me to make limited editions for them because they see how easy it is to make money off that, but I say no. I’m a designer. We're trying to create a brand. It’s more profitable to put energy and capacity and money into creating a good collection with a good name, a transparent way of working, and a recognizable ideal. With a unique piece, once it's sold, you have to do it again.

SG: Would you consider yourself as a “sustainable designer?”

PHE: The major thing is that you make durable things. If you buy a couch from IKEA with FSC-certified wood and you throw it away after two years, it is much worse than a non-FSC wood couch that you keep for 100 years. Recycling is good, but if you calculate everything, it's not actually much better, because it takes energy to move the material to be recycled. If you account for everything, often the balance isn’t as clear as you thought it could be. For me, it's about quality and creating a look that is timeless rather than a design that is fashionable. Most of our furniture gets old in a beautiful way.

SG: Can you walk me through the process of making the scrap table?

PHE: Well the scrap table was originally made out of leftovers from all these cupboards and other projects we make. We had a lot of little pieces leftover. At a certain moment I decided to create a puzzle, layering the scraps until they became strong. We made a table out of that. Then we did it ten times because I wanted to exaggerate the layers.

You want every project you make to be efficient. The price is very important. If you want to sell a chair it shouldn’t take more than one hour of work. Otherwise the price makes it impossible to sell in large amounts. We always know that even if an idea or product is very nice, if it takes too many hours, we can't sell it. Everyday, our challenge is to get everything done in time.

Because of time you also throw a lot of material away, even if you’re efficient. That's why we started making use of the leftovers and we started making products that take a lot of time. The whole essence with these was, the more time it takes, the better. When it came time to finish, we lacquered it ten times, just to exaggerate the process time. This gave it a very strong visual and tactile effect, which was successful immediately, but purely came out of the idea of exaggerating time in order to turn the world upside down.

Then of course I thought I would never sell anything because it’s the opposite of an efficient process. The whole design and value is the process itself. But almost immediately, we started selling it. It's not so strange, if you think about it. If you are fed up with always trying to do everything on time, you are going to look at this and think, “Finally, something which took a hell of a lot of time.” Everything we do is always handmade. If you put energy into it, people should know it through the details and connections. Minimalism always tries to hide the details, which is not minimalistic, because you put energy into disguising what you’ve done.

SG: How long, in terms of just the process, would it would it take to do one table?

PHE: We have two phases. The production is about 20-30 hours. It depends on who is doing it and how the material is. The other thing is lacquer. It has to be done like nine times, sanding each layer in between. It's logistically complicated.

SG: Would you say there is there anything Dutch about your design?

PHE: The problem is, if you say something is Dutch, people start comparing it with current Dutch design, and I don’t feel comfortable with that. A lot of people compare me with some deceased Dutch designers and I don’t mind. [laughs] I admire them a lot.

SG: So what is your take on Dutch design right now?

PHE: In the 1990s when we started, there was already a strong conceptualist stream in Holland. The world was enormously wealthy and didn’t know what to do with it. And then a group of Dutch designers came and put a bulb in the ceiling and said, “This is also a lamp.” And everyone else was like, “Yeah, this is also a lamp!”

Then in 2001, things changed, but the clear, conceptual approach was still an answer. Because both in wealth and in its absence, it's very nice if somebody says, “Yeah, this bulb is also a lamp.” In other words, the same Dutch design has been appreciated for two different social reasons.

There's much more discussion happening now politically, socially, sociologically, and the Dutch don’t have the only answers anymore. There are a lot of international designers who are very successful. But there is a Dutch mentality, you might say, which was appreciated by the world. A bulb in the ceiling is not design. Charles Eames is design. I’m not part of the conceptual; I always disliked it very much.

SG: Are there any other designers or architects working now whose work you admire or are inspired by?

PHE: It’s part of your job to look at something and recreate it in your mind, but I don't look to other designers often, because everyone is influenced. I like Jean Prouvé, but I didn't find him until about ten years after I started. I feel comfortable with his way of working, but he’s more an engineer than a designer.

SG: It seems that you have kind of designed these pieces for yourself. Do you envision a type of person who will buy the product—an end-user?

PHE: You are right when you say I design them for myself but I also like to sell them. I am not thinking about what the market wants, but what the market should want. I try to change people’s taste. I try to change their values or feeling of quality or beauty. I want to persuade people to see what I see.

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