London Design Festival 09: Dutch designer Dick van Hoff is showing a collection of furniture and glassware at an old garage in South Kensington.

Organised by Gallery Libby Sellers and called Elements, the exhibition presents new and existing pieces by van Hoff, and advocates the hearth as the centre of domestic life.

New pieces include chairs upholstered in leather, where metal fixings hold chunky oak batons together yet prevent them touching.

Van Hoff also presents crystal vessels with solid wooden handles attached by metal clamps, created for Royal Leerdam.

The Dutch designers's tile stove (see our previous story) and creamic objects for Royal Tichelaar Makkum (see our other previous story) are also on display.

The exhibition continues until 18 October.

See all our stories about London Design Festival 2009 in our special category.

Photos are by Gideon Hart.

Here's some text from Gallery Libby Sellers:

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Dick van Hoff - Elements

For the latest presentation by Gallery Libby Sellers, Dutch designer Dick van Hoff has created a dramatic installation in the old Garage, South Kensington, for one month to include the London Design Festival and Design Art London / Frieze art fairs.

Since graduating in 1996 from the Arnhem Academy of Art and Design, Van Hoff has produced a stream of rigorously crafted objects for both his own companies (Van Hoff Ontwerpen and Weltevree) and for others, including Droog, Rosenthal and Royal Tichelaar Makkum. His work has been bought by private clients and for the permanent collections of the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, the Fonds National dʼArt Contemporain in France and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. In this, his first exhibition in the UK, Van Hoff combines some of these existing designs with new, specifically-made works.

From his tile stove for Royal Tichelaar Makkum (with Weltevree), through the robust oak and leather furniture pieces (loosely informed by Modernist architect Gerrit Rietveld) to the crystal vessels produced in collaboration with Dutch manufacturer Royal Leerdam, the five basic elements of fire, metal, wood, earth and water become fused together through Van Hoffʼs particularly understated yet exquisite craftsmanship and attention to detail. The exhibition focuses on the importance of the hearth – the nucleus of domestic life. Its Latin name, focus, conveys its historic role as the central support of a buildingʼs structure as well as the source of all heat and warmth. For contemporary Dutch designer Dick van Hoff, the hearth is also an important signifier of the values he upholds in his own objects – integrity, solidity, conviviality and longevity.

Dick van Hoff

Dick van Hoff was born in Amsterdam in 1971 and graduated in 1996 from the Arnhem Academy of Art and Design. Now based in Velp, Netherlands Van Hoff has produced designs for both his own companies (Van Hoff Ontwerpen and Weltevree) and for others. Through his work and as a tutor at the Eindhoven Design Academy, Van Hoff has played a major role in shaping the future of a post-Droog school of design thought. His promotion of fine craftsmanship coupled with industrial techniques has forged a revived interest in the modernist principals of form, function and appropriateness. However his work is far from retrogressive. Instead it is a reaction against the over-styled and unnecessarily complicated designs he sees around him today.

Royal Leerdam Crystal

Based in the Netherlands, Royal Leerdam Crystal has been producing hand-made and blown glass objects and ornamental pieces since 1878. Working with Europeʼs purest type of crystal – Cristal Supérieur – the master glass blowers have garnered years of skill and creativity, earning them not only the Dutch Royal warrant but also the respect and patronage of glass collectors worldwide.

Royal Tichelaar Makkum

Royal Tichelaar Makkum is the Netherlands' oldest company, but it is also at the heart of innovation in contemporary ceramics. They have achieved this by fostering a culture of open minds, an inquisitive disposition, enthusiasm for research and experiment, the pursuit of perfection and the drive to deliver custom made solutions for every conceivable application of ceramics.

Gallery Libby Sellers

Gallery Libby Sellers operates as a pop-up gallery, promoting and supporting emerging design in temporary locations internationally. By commissioning new works from some of the industry's most promising and progressive designers, the gallery offers an exciting and dramatic alternative to the mass-manufactured and readily available. The eponymous gallery was established by former London Design Museum curator in Autumn 2007 and has since gone on to present a number of critically acclaimed selling exhibitions. Designers represented include Atelier NL, Daniel Brown, Simon Heijdens, Tomas Kral, Dick van Hoff, Julia Lohmann, Max Lamb, Peter Marigold, Nicolas le Moigne and Moritz Waldemeyer.

Opening hours:
19 September – 26 September: 10 – 6pm, daily
30 September – 18 October: 12 – 6pm, Wednesday – Sunday

Gallery Libby Sellers at The Garage
North Terrace. South Kensington, London. SW3 2BA