Moooi

Moooi is the Dutch brand that, at the beginning of the 2000s, brought to design a taste for wonder, irony and theatrical luxury. Its collections of lamps, furniture, rugs and wallpapers are recognisable at first glance: objects that tell a story and that want, above all, to surprise.

An extra “o”

Moooi was born in 2001 from the meeting between the designer Marcel Wanders and the entrepreneur Casper Vissers, whom Wanders had approached to sell one of his lampshades. Wanders was already known for the Knotted Chair (1996), a chair made of knotted rope stiffened with resin, a symbol of 1990s Dutch design. The name comes from the Dutch word mooi, “beautiful”, with an extra “o”: to stand out, but also because the domain mooi.com was already taken. The aim was to work with unconventional designers. Wanders became its art director.

The objects

Moooi made its debut that same year, 2001, at the Salone del Mobile in Milan, with photographs by Erwin Olaf, and soon became famous for pieces such as:

• the Random Light by Bertjan Pot, a sphere of randomly wound fibreglass that lights up like a glowing ball of yarn;
• the Smoke series by Maarten Baas: classic furniture burnt with a torch and then protected with resin, beautiful precisely because it is charred;
• the Horse Lamp by the Swedish collective Front, a life-size black horse holding a lamp;
• Wanders's own objects, somewhere between Baroque and fairy tale.

Ownership and the present

Between 2006 and 2012 B&B Italia owned 50% of Moooi; then the founders regained control. The company is based in Breda, in the Netherlands, with shops and showrooms in Amsterdam, London and New York, and its products are sold in more than eighty countries. Its taste for excess and storytelling links Moooi to the tradition of Postmodernism, but with today's spirit.

Sources

• Wikipedia – Moooi (en)
• Wikipedia – Marcel Wanders (en)
• Moooi – sito ufficiale