Designer Maxim Velcovsky

In seiner Jugend stellte der tschechische Designer Maxim Velcovsky mit Begeisterung Coca Cola Dosen in seinem Zimmer aus, die er aus dem Müll der Botschaftshäuser sammelte. Nun arbeitet er daran, Rost endlich salonfähig zu machen und wartet geduldig auf die NASA, bis sie ihr getestetes Material endlich in die Spielwiese der Designer entlässt. Velcovskys Talent ist gleichsam ein Zaubertrick: alten Ideen wird die Form abstreift, um ihnen eine neue Funktion zu gegeben.

Maxim Velcovsky hat traditionelles Design aus Glas und Porzellan stets aus einem anderen Blickwinkel interpretiert. Dieser Ansatz entspringt seinen tief verhafteten tschechischen Wurzeln, wo die Herstellung von Glas und Porzellan einen besonders hohen Stellenwert besitzt. Für seine herausragenden Glas- und Porzellan-Kreationen wurde er im Jahre 2007 vom renommierten Design-Magazin &fork unter die 100 außergewöhnlichsten Designer des Jahres gereiht.

SP: Dear Maxim, how do you find pleasure in what you do?
MV: I really enjoy this feeling of being able say something through the object.... that makes people realize something. It makes me happy when people react to my projects; when I feel that it makes them laugh or even angry. When they stop and look at it, showing some sort of emotion rather than passing by.

SP: What aspect do you find particularly challenging in being a designer?
MV: Trying to see the different topics and nuances within design itself; and to always try to challenge the context and to find new technologies. Things look and feel differently in different places. Design is also about how things are displayed.
I’d love to experiment with new materials, like to create glass out of corn or use other technologies that have been tried by NASA for instance. There are lots of fantastic materials they work with but it will take time until we will have access to them.

SP: How important is humor for you and in your work?
MV: Humor is very important in life. It often helps describing a situation or culture in a certain way.

SP: Do you have a steady source of inspiration?
M: I find inspiration wherever I go. We get influenced by our surroundings. I think it matters where you grew up as a kid and which objects and toys you were playing with; which glasses you were drinking from.
I grew up during communism where there was no competition, no design scene at all. Factories, for instance, just produced one kind of design for a decade. One always felt intrigued when going around to friend’s places and could could feel that people are improvising to improve their immediate living surroundings.

SP: A part of your work also engages with the concept of giving „old“ objects a new meaning, a process you call „restarting“. Where did the idea come from?
MV: I would say it does go back to my Czech roots and the love for craftmanship.
When I grew up for example, building-material was not readily available in shops so people started to collect and assemble things themselves. The most famous example being the greenhouse made out of empty gherkin jars (for growing tomatoes) that people would build in their gardens after they managed to collect about 500 of them. It was built like a proper brick building.

SP: Can you give a couple of examples of „restarted“ objects?
MV: The rubber boot or boot vase would be an example: I turned an ordinary rubber boot into a luxury porcelain vase. Before the shoe or the object was protecting against water and now it keeps the water. By convincing people about the opposite function you somehow instigate a change. Through my work I want to point out the fact that people sometimes don’t realize that they are being told how things are all the time; communism was a great example for that.


SP: Can you imagine being anything else than a designer?
MV: Not really. Perhaps a sitcom writer if at all. I’d like the idea of creating a sitcom.


SP: Your idol?
MV: I quite like Tapio Wirkalla. He is responsible for the original design of the Finlandia bottle and thousands of other
fantastic shapes.

Text in voller Länge nachzulesen auf Deutsch und Englisch in der Dezember Ausgabe von pool Magazine und unter
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