About - GESSEN

Studio

Gessen is an Amsterdam-based design studio making furniture and objects to inspire creative expression in everyday life. We celebrate bold shapes, unexpected colour, and have a soft spot for glossy materials.

Rooted in an architectural background, our work balances utility with personality to create pieces that are designed to be lived with and made to last.

Intention

We see our pieces as just one part of the whole, coming to life in the way they're used, whether it’s a vase holding wildflowers, a bowl filled with a crunchy salad, or a colour-blocked table setting shared with those closest.

We aim to create objects that naturally find their way into the moments people gather, and that continue to be adapted and reinvented over time.

Design

Architectural principles guide us with solid brutal forms, stripped-back clean lines, and a focus on how things fit together in a way that feels honest and elegant.

Inspiration also comes from nature, like the pull of gravity, or the way heat turns a solid fluid. Designs often begin with heavy, uncomplicated shapes, balanced by transparency, reflection and colour, to create finished pieces that feel open and luminous.

Each one is reduced to a single gesture, carving space out from a solid shape, so that form and function become inseparable.

Process

Our pieces are designed to stand alone and connect seamlessly, avoiding unnecessary fixings or joins. Most begin as simple geometries, like a circle, a square, or a block. These are then cut, carved or hollowed out until they find their final form, maintaining integrity as a singular object.

Material drives the direction of each piece. Glass, acrylic and metal all behave differently with light, and we focus on celebrating the characteristics that make each one distinct. Casting acrylic creates pure, solid shapes with perfect clarity, while glassblowing captures a bubbly sense of heat and gravity.

Craft

Every Gessen piece is made in Europe in collaboration with small specialist workshops. Our close relationships with these makers allow us to explore what each material can do, and the hands-on nature of the work often guides the final outcome in ways that are unexpected, giving each piece its own distinct character.

Using both traditional and modern techniques, acrylic is cast, carved, and polished by hand, glass is mouth-blown and shaped with heat, and steel is meticulously polished by hand to achieve a smooth, flawless finish. This slow, deliberate approach produces subtle variations – marks of the material and of the people who made it, making each piece unique.