Studio Olaf Stevens 2.16

About Olaf Stevens,

Simple forms and lavish dessins

For years now, the Dutch designer Olaf Stevens, has made a name for himself with his unusual style. In glass and porcelain alike, his variations of form and ornamentation are always guaranteed to surprise, combining motifs of a long tradition with absolute innovations.
If he does not choose to make the object himself, Olaf Stevens often collaborates closely with the craftspeople and manufacturers who produce his objects, making the most of his profound understanding of the manufacturing techniques to develop new angles in his designs. What could have been more appropriate than to get together with the glass specialists in Sweden, who themselves enjoy high esteem in the international world of design. Picking up an existing principle, the result of these meetings are extraordinary collections, of shallow bowls and vessels tending to a more symbolic “utility” value. It is the kind of vessel that, through the millennia, has been the first type of object of human civilization and domesticity, as the many stone-age precursors testify. Like these, however, Olaf Stevens’s objects obtain their special artistic worth only through their particular design. Stevens exploits the translucency and brilliance of the objects in applying his surface design in various, sometimes ornamented layers; it is only in seeing (through) them together and in their myriad reflections that they unfold their full effect. Thus, decoration is not solely a matter of the outer surface, but, as in all ceramic objects, of the body of the material. The effect is astounding.