Sebastiaan Straatsma was educated at the Design Academy in Eindhoven where he worked on projects for contemporary names such as Droog and Gijs Bakker Design.
He works independently and in collaboration on conceptual designs, lighting, interiors, furniture and material research. He launched his first self-produced collection, Random Industry, at the Salone del Mobile in Milan in 2003. This launch was later featured in the New York Times. His work has been exhibited extensively since 1997 (shortly after the completion of his studies) at prestigious venues such as San Francisco MOMA and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
His work is known for the use of disruption, humour and pop-art design. His recent work, a series of filigree vases and chargers with the almost cynical title Dustcollectors, shows how form can subvert function.
The inspiration for the Dustcollectors lies in classical vases and sculptures through the ages from Europe and the East. Straatsma has stretched the concept by contrasting these canonical forms with the symbols and texts covering it. Woven with threadlike epoxy strands, the vases are essentially complex line drawings describing a 3D canvas conveying colour and poetical expressions of the artist, or to paraphrase Jean Cocteau’s definition of ‘Art’, “where the lines of poetry are drawn out and re-assembled”.