Soft Baroque Chairs
London-based design studio Soft Baroque melds conventional household furniture and objects with conceptual art. Its experimental approach to design is evocative, fantastical and functional.
Soft Baroque was founded in 2013 by design duo Saša Štucin and Nicholas Gardner. Štucin studied at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design of the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia, graduating with a bachelor’s degree in visual communications in 2011. Gardner earned a bachelor’s degree in furniture design in 2010 from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in Australia. Štucin and Gardner later met while attending London’s Royal College of Art. They both graduated in 2013, Štucin with a master’s degree in visual communications and Gardner with a master’s degree in design products.
In 2011, Štucin took part in a workshop under Milton Glaser at the School of Visual Arts in New York and, in 2013, he participated in a research project at the Sandberg Instituut’s Think Tank for Visual Strategies in Amsterdam. Gardner worked as an assistant in designer Jerszy Seymour’s studio in Berlin in 2012 and as an assistant in Max Lamb’s design studio in 2013.
Since partnering as Soft Baroque, Štucin and Gardner have garnered critical attention for their unconventional modern furniture and objets d’art. The studio’s first piece — designed in 2014 — was the Lenticularis mirror, an innovative cross between a mirror and a scent diffuser. Another notable early work was the cartoon-like Pearl Screw Shelf bookcase in 2017, which features broken walnut timber planks, engineered plastic shelves and freshwater pearl screws.
Other pieces, such as chairs, benches, the Puffy Brick Column stools, vases, tables and lighting, are designed to blur the lines between functionalism and art. As Gardner explained in an interview with PIN-UP Magazine, “With a lot of our objects, we try to form a strange equation.”
Soft Baroque’s unique designs have included commissions from the luxury fashion brand Balenciaga and Swedish design company HEM. The duo has exhibited their pieces at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, the Swiss Institute in New York City, galleries in Copenhagen and New York and in major international design fairs.
On 1stDibs, discover a range of Soft Baroque seating, case pieces and storage cabinets, decorative objects and more.
2010s English Modern Soft Baroque Chairs
Pine
2010s British Post-Modern Soft Baroque Chairs
Zebra Wood
21st Century and Contemporary Italian Modern Soft Baroque Chairs
Steel
Mid-20th Century Soft Baroque Chairs
Aluminum
Mid-20th Century Swiss Modern Soft Baroque Chairs
Concrete
2010s Argentine Modern Soft Baroque Chairs
Wood
2010s American Modern Soft Baroque Chairs
Fur, Alpaca, Wood
2010s Mexican Modern Soft Baroque Chairs
Hardwood, Walnut
21st Century and Contemporary English Modern Soft Baroque Chairs
Other
1990s Italian Mid-Century Modern Soft Baroque Chairs
Leather
2010s American Soft Baroque Chairs
Ash, Maple, Oak, Walnut
2010s American Soft Baroque Chairs
Ash, Maple, Oak, Walnut
2010s Italian Soft Baroque Chairs
Steel
Late 19th Century American Country Antique Soft Baroque Chairs
Wood
