The Wood Life

Love at first sight is a powerful thing. Wiet Hekking had worked as a buyer in the Dutch textile industry for almost two decades when, in 1988, he first spotted the chair that changed his life—Grete Jalk’s iconic GJ, a 1963 marvel made out of almost impossibly bent plywood. The design potential of this industrial process was a revelation to Hekking; his infatuation with the seat provided the foundation for a personal collection of like pieces that eventually outgrew both his home and the storage space he rented to accommodate it.