Among the myriad advantages of global industry that are also problems of global industry is, inarguably, that of centralised production with subsequent international distribution. And that of a popular unquestioning, unthinking, blithe acceptance of the products of global industry.
Problems Essen based platform Verlag der Dinge allow one to better approach and challenge.
Problems Essen based platform Verlag der Dinge approach and challenge.
Established in 2021 by Maximilian Clauß, an Intercultural Business Psychology graduate with a background in banking and Dustin Jessen who, after studying Product Design at first Folkwang Universität der Künste, Essen, and Design Academy Eindhoven, and laterally at the Royal College of Art, London, returned to Folkwang Universität der Künste to undertake a PhD in context of the theme Die Gestalt der Nachhaltigkeit, Forming Sustainability, Verlag der Dinge's first commercial project was the clam like Laura's Mirror, a two-piece pocket/cosmetic mirror designed by Dustin whose two halves are held together not through an articulating ligament but via a powerful magnet, a magnet that enables the pocket/cosmetic mirror to be attached to any appropriate metal surface and thus employed as an ad-hoc wall/bookcase/fridge/etc mirror.
A two-piece magnetic mirror that was initially produced in wood before being joined by a version in recycled polypropylene; a recycled polypropylene two-piece magnetic mirror realised in cooperation with the, similarly from Dustin in Essen co-established, platform Das Rezyklat, a platform for the recycling of plastic waste in a variety of contexts that has its roots in the Eindhoven based Precious Plastic movement, a collective which, as previously discussed in these dispatches, focuses on the development of lo-cost, lo-tech machines for recycling synthetic plastic waste that can be constructed and used lo-cally thereby empowering individuals and communities to recycle synthetic plastic waste, rather than leaving us all to passively wait for industry or government to bring forth solutions. And to do nothing if those solutions aren't forthcoming. Apart from passively blaming industry and/or government for their passivity and inaction. A lo-cost, lo-tech, lo-cal production that also allows manufacturers such as Verlag der Dinge to sidestep the centrality of global industry and produce decentralised: its not as if synthetic plastic waste is a specific problem in Essen and environs, is a raw material only available between Duisburg and Dortmund. Whereby we don't know if decentralised production is something that is of interest to Verlag der Dinge, we didn’t ask, didn’t discuss it with them, as so oft it's simply us imposing our thoughts, our ideas, on someone else’s business model. Which, yes, is very rude; but, in the interests of the necessary global discourse on industrial production that needs must be undertaken with more urgency that it currently is, an impudence we feel justified in taking. Not least because in those products Verlag der Dinge presented in context of Passagen Interior Design Week 2025 we very much felt not only the possibility of decentralised production and distribution, the necessity of decentralised production and distribution, but an unspoken desire.
Which brings us back to Dustin's recycled polypropylene two-piece magnetic mirror.
A recycled polypropylene two-piece magnetic mirror that carries itself with the marbled surface, a swirling marbling that nods respectively to times and materials past, that defines the visual aesthetic of Verlag der Dinge's recycled polypropylene objects, and which reminds of the mix of waste of different origins and hues that combine to form the basis material from which all arises. And which thus also reminds of society. Which is never a bad thing, certainly not these days.
And a recycled polypropylene two-piece magnetic mirror that can and could be employed as an ad-hoc wall/bookcase/fridge/etc mirror Dustin subsequently developed to the ETC round wall hooks that exist as individuals or in communities on a rack, and also to Laura's Wall Mirror: essentially a small wall-mounted coat/clothes hook that doubles as a small wall-mounted mirror, or a small wall-mounted mirror that doubles as a small wall-mounted coat/clothes hook, take your pick. And which regardless of which you pick is a truly joyous object that not only packs a lot of reflective surface into a compact space, a compact space that traditionally is ignored and unused yet which as Dustin ably demonstrates has a real value, not least in any compact contemporary apartment, but also on account of the patterns the reflection throw into the surrounding space when several Laura's Wall Mirrors are arranged as a group.
From their own designs, more accurately Dustin's designs, including the wall-mounted hook HKN, an object in recycled polypropylene that allows for a variety of hanging/throwing over options, Verlag der Dinge began coopering with external designers, the first fruits of which were on show in context of Passagen Interior Design Week cologne 2025, including, the recycled polypropylene shoe horn SHU by Vienna based designer Klemens Schillinger, a designer whose work we last came across in context of the exhibition Garten at Galerie Rauminhalt as part of Vienna Design Week 2023, and a recycled polypropylene shoe horn which, as with Laura's Wall Mirror, formally and functionally very neatly represents the reimagining of banal everyday objects, the reimagining of those objects no-one thinks about, certainly no designer naturally approaches, not when there are chairs and lamps and desks to be designed, that define Verlag der Dinge's portfolio, that help underscore Verlag der Dinge as a publisher of objects we all use but never think about, never question, but which in a great many cases could be, are, in need of a re-design, a re-approaching.
A principle particularly elegantly underscored by RCH, Recycled Coat Hook, by Cologne based Thomas Schnur, a sturdy, robust, durable object that through being such plays with the famed fragility, ephemerality, of plastic coat hooks, a reality we all know, all accept, all shouldn't accept, but have never questioned. Just complain about when a fragile plastic coat hook breaks and we throw it into the bin along with the other by-products of contemporary industrial consumer culture we've no longer a use for and which are destined for the landfill or incinerator. With RCH in your hand you question all that. And begin to question other aspects of our relationship to fragile, ephemeral plastic objects. One of several discourses RCH initiates, not least through its asymmetry, a formal expression which after forcing you to question if it can function as a coat hook — it very much can — then forces you to question why coat hangers are symmetrical? ¿Why are so many products of every day use symmetrical? ¿Is symmetrical automatically good? ¿Is society symmetrical?
A questioning of symmetry, or more accurately of evenness, uniformity, parallelness, also reflected in the S15 shoe rack by Cologne based Sebastian Goldschmidtböing, a shoe rack that appears to suck space out of a room, providing as it does for a lot of storage in an infeasibly compact area, a very pleasing echoing of the amount of reflective surface Laura's Wall Mirror packs into an, apparently, non-existent space, certainly a space that is traditionally unseen, a shoe rack whose 15 sticks clearly can't hold only pairs of shoes, ¿why 15? ¿Is there an advantage in an uneven number of shoe storage sticks? ¿Is there an advantage in the uneven that global industry rejects? ¿Is there an advantage in the spaces between the even? ¿Is binary the only answer?¿¿?? A shoe rack whose familiarly unfamiliar formal expression, its very clear debt of gratitude to generations past that it happily acknowledges without getting sucked into the perils of a formalism that defines so many contemporary furniture and furnishing publishers, that enables not only an instantaneous connection but an easy integration into any space.
And shoe rack in wood that reinforces that for all Verlag der Dinge are the recycled polypropylene that dominated in their Cologne presentation, that isn't their raison d'etre. Rather they are about Dinge, Things, are about questioning Dinge. A questioning that through their questioning, and the expressions of that questioning, they admonish we all undertake. While providing some genuinely engaging, meaningful, communicative Dinge for contemporary and future society to use while we undertake that questioning.
Whereby we're not saying that which Verlag der Dinge provide and promise doesn't come without problems, everything does and you deceive yourself if you believe something doesn't, if you believe something only brings advantages; but, that awareness of the ever presence of problems and the need to be alert and responsive to avoid them taking on the scale of the selfish global industry that has defined recent decades past, and which is stubbornly hanging on simply refusing to pass, is, we'd argue, inherent in that which Verlag der Dinge provide and promise. The important question is how that develops.
For our part we're looking forward to engaging with those hows.
More information on Verlag der Dinge can be found at https://vededi.de
Passagen Interior Design Week 2025 has now ended, details of the event and what you missed can be found at www.voggenreiter.com/passagen2025
