Contrabande - Sander Wassink

Aangewakkerd door de sterke uniformiteit in vorm en materiaalafwerking die de globalisering veroorzaakt, onderzoekt Sander Wassink hoe lokale productie de verschijningsvorm van het westerse design zou kunnen verrijken

To mark the Gispen Specials presentation, designer Sander Wassink (Harlingen 1984) was asked to make a design based on one of the Gispen chairs. He selected the diagonal chair, which in 1927 was the first tubular steel chair the company made. Gispen has always prized the unique quality of production on a small scale, and Sander Wassink also incorporates these qualities as an essential element in his work. These days, industrial manufacturing is scattered all over the world and
everything looks the same, so there is less and less scope for maintaining the characteristics of local skills and working practices. Yet these qualities are precisely what Wassink is looking for. He integrates them into his designs as a tribute to local tradition and culture.

He took the Gispen chair with him to Sefrou in Morocco – at one time an important trading hub and now a centre producing handmade products. Wassink had the chair reproduced there using exclusively local methods. Attitudes towards property and authorship in Morocco are completely different. A design is never finished and it can be adapted as the user sees fit. so Wassink fine-tuned the design on a daily basis. using materials and expertise he found on the street. A photograph at the status quo was taken every day.

After these nine days on the street he packed the chair in the cheap plastic used in almost everything on the street. And took the chair back to europe on a cheap ryanair flight.

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