Stools Made From Dead People’s Stuff

Dutch designer Joost Gehem is a lot of things, but sentimental isn’t one of them. A stool is the simplest piece of furniture you can make. I think that’s why designers are so drawn to them: A stool is a tabula rasa, a generic blank slate, with all the structural complexity of a cinder block. Over the past year we’ve written about stools made of ocean refuse, animal bones, and magnetic fragments. Now, a Dutch designer named Joost Gehem has put an uncanny spin on the typology: Gehem makes stools from dead people’s belongings. To be fair, the one-line description of Gehem’s seating collection is a little sensational. In fact, the Eindhoven native uses all kinds of unwanted belongings, some of them coming from the estates of the deceased, others coming from repossessed homes. "135,000 deaths, 32,000 divorces, 10,000 bankruptcies, and thousands of hospitali...