Rivka Baake and Wilfrid Kreutz live in an old brick warehouse in Hanau, near Frankfurt, Germany, where they make glittering brass and copper mobiles. We’ve been spotting—and admiring—their delicately balanced constructions all over Instagram, and wondering about the story behind them. Their mobiles, they tell us, are inspired by Alexander Calder’s moveable sculptures (the term “mobile” was coined by Marcel Duchamp in his description of Calder’s free-moving creations back in 1931, long before mobile had anything to do with technology; Hypermobility, a show of Calder’s live-action works is currently on view at the Whitney Museum in NYC).
Baake and Kreutz began their business, Lappalainen, by selling vintage furniture and fell into their current specialty by demand: “We made our first mobile for our own living room,” says Baake, who has a background in art history. Kreutz, a trained silversmith, applied the same skills he uses in creating flatware and bowls to that prototype. “Our friends liked it so much that we got our first orders. Nowadays, vintage furniture has been put to the side because we’re currently too busy making mobiles and sending them all over the world”
Styling and photography by Studio Oink, courtesy of Lappalainen.
For more inspiration, browse our Art & Design archive, including:
- At Home with An Artist (and DIY Mobile Maker) in France
- Living with Art: Galerist Veerle Wenes at Home in Antwerp
- New Geometry: The Return of the Art Poster
And on Gardenista, take a look at Dutch Painter Maaike Koster’s Portraits of Houseplants.
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