The Bouroullecs at Magis: steel, wood and the blacksmith's hand

For most of two decades Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec worked as one of design's great partnerships, finishing each other's sentences in steel and wood. Two of their Magis families show the range.

Both begin from the same question — how honest can an industrial object be about the way it was made — and answer it in opposite directions, one through precision, one through the hammer.

Steelwood, half factory half workshop

Steelwood (2008) does exactly what its name promises: it marries turned solid wood with folded steel plate. The chair's curved steel back is shaped through a nine-phase process of perforating and bending — half factory, half workshop — and it won the Compasso d'Oro, design's oldest and most serious prize.

In a world of flawless mouldings, imperfection is the luxury.

The nine phases are the design. What looks like a simple two-material chair is really a carefully staged negotiation between the machine's consistency and the wood's warmth, neither allowed to dominate.

Officina, and the return of forging

Officina (2015) reaches further back in time. The brothers revived forging — hammering hot iron on an anvil, one of the oldest metalworking processes there is — so that every frame keeps the random marks of the tools that made it.

The wrought iron's surface, they told Dezeen, is 'alive and imperfect', which lends each piece a special vibration. From it came stools, benches, coat stands and mirrors, no two quite identical.

Refusing to hide the hand

It is industrial design that refuses to hide the hand — and in an age of perfect surfaces, that is exactly the point. The irregularity is not a flaw the process failed to remove; it is the value the process was chosen to create.

To live with an Officina piece is to keep a record of its own making in the room — the opposite of the anonymous, seamless object, and all the more collectible for it.