A Furniture Factory Run by 7-Year-Olds

Architizer News

A Furniture Factory Run by 7-Year-Olds

January 4, 2012

Much like the United States, Holland has strict rules regulating child labor and the legal working age, which is usually set at 14. Children younger than that can work for three hours a week or less, a stipulation that hasn’t stopped Dutch designer Lucas Maassen from opening Lucas Maassen & Sons, a furniture “factory” run primarily by his three young sons, who design, build and paint the pieces for a fee of one euro per piece (as stipulated by a contract the trio entered into with their father).

The “factory” started out as an experiment, as the elder Maassen searched for a way to teach his sons about work ethic. Legally speaking, 9-year-old Thijme and 7-year-olds Julian and Maris can only work for three hours a week, so to meet demand (and clearly, to satisfy a certain bespoke imperfection) they paint rapidly and indiscriminately. The shelves and chairs bear the creative mark of the painter, from ad hoc ombre to the stains of absently-painted patterns. Some will undoubtedly say the project is a functional gimmick, but the pieces would have satisfied Walter Benjamin called the “aura” of authenticity surrounding objects produced by hand. “That which withers in the age of mechanical reproduction is the aura of the work of art,” wrote Benjamin back in 1936, “the authenticity of a thing is the essence of all that is transmissible from its beginning, ranging from its substantive duration to its testimony to the history which it has experienced,” fingerprints and all.