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“0e don’t care about design, we don’t care about
art, we just make the things we want to design,”
says Job Smeets of his Studio Job’s detached approach.
Of course, the indifference has nothing to do with
craftsmanship, for which Studio Job is renowned, or
creative vision, for which the i rm is revered, as
m u l t i p l e m u s e u m e x h i b i t i o n s m a k e c l e a r. I t i s a b o u t
launching unblemished new ideas—born from
respect for tradition—into the design orbit.
From all indications, the company’s idiosyncratic
objects are i nding a growing cohort of collectors.
“Studio Job’s avant-garde designs continue to delight
and draw, with new collectors discovering their
work each year,” says Phillips worldwide design
director Alexander Payne. “The market at auction
is still very much in its infancy.”
It’s likely that the market will feel the effect of
“Studio Job: mad House,” which opens at New York’s
Museum of Arts and Design this month. “We’ve never
done anything like this before,” says senior curator
Ronald Labaco of the retrospective of the 15-year-
old i rm, whose partners curated the objects, designed
the exhibition, and created the audio tour. But Studio
Job is not just any design practice. It comprises
an extraordinarily versatile Belgian-Dutch duo who
have been shaking up the design world since 2000.
Smeets and Nynke Tynagel are unique among
contemporary practitioners, working in a manner
that reprises the guild-centered workshops of the
Renaissance. Each object they design is handmade in
small editions in their Eindhoven, Netherlands,
atelier by a small team of master craftsmen. Initially,
the costly results did not endear the team to their
conservative countrymen, who perceived Studio Job as
elitist. “The i ght against the establishment took time,”As this seemingly ubiquitous design
firm makes both its museum
retrospective and mass production
debuts, will collectors be able
to get enough? By Judith GuraROBERT KOT
BLOUINARTINFO.COM | MARCH 2016 ART+AUCTIONStudio Job
The first edition
of five of the
Robber Baron
floor lamp, 2007,
from Studio Job,
brought $110,500
on an estimate
of $100,000
to $150,000
at Phillips New
York in 2012.