Mats Christéen’s journey into furniture design is as remarkable as they come. Drafted into the world of professional hockey as a teen, he moved into high fashion modelling before the design world beckoned in 2013. That was the year he started Foundrywood.
Marrying the natural beauty of organic and reclaimed materials with the pure and modern lines of Scandinavian design, Christéen has staked his business on the type of rustic industrialism that harks back to his roots and embraces his new home in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. He oversees all of the creative design and still crafts a limited number of pieces for The Mats Christéen collection under the Foundrywood brand.
His aesthetic ranges from thick salvaged beams bookended between two metal blocks – a bench needing only its most archetypal elements – to the visual and intellectual puzzle of the ’Jenga’ dining table, made up of intersecting white pine beams.
Between this balance of delicacy and power, a raw edge persists – literally, in the case of the unfinished side of the ’Fractal’ coffee table.
