Roughness and luxury may seem incompatible to most of us but designers around the world are showing how they can be partners. Instead of smoothing everything down to a precise finish, they are displaying partially sanded surfaces, bare wood and chipped paint. Design that looks slightly underworked is peeping out from behind rows of sharp-cut chrome.
Beijing-based Xie Dong's delicate china is a case in point. Her ceramics would look eerily perfect were it not for its creases. The Crinkled Bowls and Elderdown Quilt Vase are finished with a raw look that's totally unexpected from porcelain. Taking cues from the vagaries and imperfections of nature are never going to be easy but somehow Dong manages it with her sculptural ripples.
Netherlands-based designer Piet Hein Eek is another disciple of the relaxed form. When he first started he claimed he was reacting against the craving for flawlessness. Now he produces furniture that looks unfinished and exposed with rough and sawn edges. Often made of scrap wood, his furniture is nothing like the sleek, laboriously detailed products we are more used to. However, despite his enthusiasm for the trend, Hein Eek is not against more stylised designs.
'The Industrial Revolution was also meant to be an aesthetic revolution with perfect reproduction being the ultimate goal,' he says. But the designer, whose works are carried by Lane Crawford, also worries that appreciating perfect production means disregarding other beauty. 'Materials and products that age are also beautiful and this is often forgotten, ' he says.
It is this awakening of different kinds of beauty that defines the trend. Rabih Hage, who has worked on the train stations of Paris, Montparnasse and Nantes, agrees, saying: 'There has been a world of standardisation and copy for the past 20 years and people used to call it luxury. My design is about uniqueness and no standards.'
If Hage's words sound alarming then you have not seen his domino table and cabinets. Hage might claim he has no standards but his work is enticing, with more emphasis on originality and practicality than polish. 'Functionality and beauty are still there, present and part of the total design,' he says.