Sebastian Herkner – The passion for essence
Defined by the January 2019 edition of Maison & Objet, “Designer of the Year”, Sebastian Herkner is one of the fast-growing figures in the world of contemporary design.
Born in Bad Mergentheim, he studied product design at the University of Offenbach for the Arts and Design and then continued his studies with Stella McCartney in London and other important design figures until he opened his own studio in Offenbach am Main in 2006 , through which he focused on the potential of materials and the importance of small details.
Over the years, the studio has created design objects for many furniture brands such as ClassiCon (which owes its beginnings to success, thanks to the creation of the Bell Table), Cappellini, Dedon, Fontana Arte, Moroso, Rosenthal and others, working simultaneously on projects interior design for exhibitions and museums.
Known today for furniture, lamps, bowls, vases and carpets, perfumes, interior design projects and even for fashion collections (such as the collaboration with Stella McCartney), Herkner owes its fame also to the continuous search for forms of traditional craftsmanship with which he make modern products in all parts of the world. He is known for the creation of great stylistic and characterized pieces such as, to name one, the Seku armchair by Moroso, where the originality of the fibers used reflects the assigned name: parrot, in the Wolof language.
Herkner’s style, however, is also composed of rigor and masterful elegance of form, shown by the collection of outdoor armchairs for Emu or the New Pipe Dining chair for Moroso, where the combination of retro and modern taste gives life to an exceptional work aesthetic pleasantness.
In many interviews, Sebastian Herkner talks about himself as a person who has always been interested in craftsmanship, materials and colors. Creating objects, he explains, is an authentic source of expression that comes from an idea and then passes through all the workers who make it possible to create unique objects. For his works he relies on glass blowers, carpenters and artisans of the territory capable of expressing the value of tradition with their own experience; but not only: the new and more recent technologies are an integral part of his work and realization of objects that are impossible to recreate otherwise. For Herkner, functionality and aesthetics are values that go hand in hand and require equal care in the creative process. Only in this way, he explains, an object can effectively be “complete” and combined with its physical and abstract characteristics.
A proof of his words, his achievements in the field of objects and accessories for the home stand out for the care taken in the details, capable of giving the whole work a unique style of great value. Here we mention the Loon lamp by Dedon, the Nebra by Fontana Arte and the Bell Light lamp by ClassiCon; materials that are profoundly different from each other find in these creations an all-round expressive space, capable of giving the maximum of compositional imagination.
Of equal importance are the furnishing accessories, among which the sculpture Compagno by Bosa and the vases Collana, Falda and Domo for Rosenthal stand out.
In the showrooms of Inverigo, Milan and Lugano, Salvioni Design Solutions hosts many of the brands with which Sebastian Herkner has worked and continues to work today, creating new icons of contemporary design.
