Porcelain Stool by Hella Jongerius

Hella Jongerius
Porcelain Stool, 1997

Porcelain usually lives safely on the dinner table, but Hella Jongerius wondered whether it could become the furniture itself. Her Porcelain Stool takes the form of a continuous folded band, its soft curves recalling the way clay bends and moves before it enters the kiln.

Once fired, the delicate-looking material becomes rigid enough to support the body. Left unglazed, the biscuit porcelain keeps a quiet, chalky surface that makes the stool feel both fragile and surprisingly solid. Measuring 46 × 54 × 24 cm, it was produced in a limited edition, with an example now held by the Centraal Museum in Utrecht. Its shape later inspired Jongerius’s Felt Stool of 2000, which translated the same flowing form into a softer industrial material.

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The stool was created for Droog Design for Rosenthal: Experiments in Porcelain, a 1997 project that invited designers to push porcelain far beyond traditional tableware.