Moooi Smoke Armchair

The Moooi Smoke Armchair by Maarten Baas is honestly one of the weirdest and coolest pieces of furniture you'll ever see. This Dutch designer had this crazy idea - what if you took perfectly good wooden chairs and just burned them? Not accidentally, but on purpose, until they're completely charred and look like they came out of some house fire. Then he coats the whole thing in epoxy so it's preserved forever in this burnt state. It sounds completely insane when you describe it, but when you see one in person, it's genuinely beautiful in this dark, dramatic way. The fire creates all these unpredictable patterns and textures that you could never plan or replicate, so every single chair ends up looking different.

The first time someone sits in one of these, they always do this double-take because your brain expects burnt wood to feel fragile or rough, but the epoxy coating makes everything smooth and solid. Baas paired it with black leather cushions that have these old-school decorative tacks, and the whole combination just works perfectly together. It's comfortable too, which is the part that really surprises people - the proportions are spot-on for actually using as dining chair with arms. There's this little compartment under the seat with repair supplies, which cracks me up because it shows Baas was thinking practically even while doing something so conceptually wild. The thing weighs quite a bit, probably because of all that resin, but it feels rock-solid when you're sitting in it.

Moooi is the kind of company that sees a recent graduate setting furniture on fire and thinks "yes, this is exactly what the world needs more of." Marcel Wanders and his team have always been attracted to designers who do things differently, even when those things seem completely nuts at first glance. They've built their whole brand around supporting these kinds of experimental ideas that blur the line between art and furniture. The Smoke collection put both Baas and Moooi on the map back in 2002, proving that sometimes the most ridiculous-sounding concepts end up creating the most memorable and lasting designs.