Quilton 3 Seater Vidar 932 and Matin Wall Lamp. Image Courtesy of HAY.
Since it was founded in Denmark in 2002 by real life couple Rolf and Mette Hay, HAY has become one of Europe’s leading household names. From bottles to chairs to sofas and umbrellas, they’ve created a market for simple, colourful and well-designed objects that are built to last. As they invited us into their studio, we learned more.
SLEEK: What was your first encounter with design?
Mette: My parents had a store – you could describe it as a Danish equivalent to the Conran Shop – since I was 13, so I grew up in close contact to the design industry, and thereby, objects. My father had an office above the store where he collected design objects. Two of those pieces hold a special place in my heart, Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni’s iconic 1957 saddle-chair, the Zanotta Sella, and George Sowden’s 1997 calculator for Alessi, in a mint green. I am lucky enough to own both today. My father gave me the saddle for my 20th birthday, and the calculator found its way to me, too.
Rolf: Unlike Mette, I am not from a family where design was present as much, and it was not until I was about 22 years old that I discovered I had creative qualities. So for me, instead of pointing out a specific object, I would rather mention that, as a young man, I went to see an exhibition at Germany’s Vitra Design Museum about the Charles and Ray Eames. This experience has had an enormous impact on me, and what I am doing today.
Rolf & Mette by Petra Kleis. Image Courtesy of HAY.
S: Can you describe how inspiration finds its way into your work?
RH: To describe where our inspiration comes from is so difficult because it’s an extensive mix of many things. We draw inspiration for our work when looking at art, we visit museums, we travel – but most of all, we are inspired by other human beings. This might be all kinds of people: a designer or an artist, but just as much a chef or a friend.
MH: I keep being surprised by how I always seem to notice and discover new things when I travel to, say, India, or Japan – countries where everything looks and smells different to begin with. I guess my perception is always informed by what I’m currently looking for in my work and that’s how these influences then find their way into the work itself.
S: What happens when you have that light bulb moment and create something new?
MH: I definitely experience a physical reaction in my body, which is hard to put into words. I would compare it to a little rush of adrenaline, I get happy and excited. In terms of the playground of possibilities, it depends: Sometimes I can see the entire universe unfolding in front of my eyes straight away, sometimes the idea needs a little more research and exploration before it forms fully.
RH: To be honest, those moments – when we discover a strong and interesting direction for a new project, when you hold something in your hand that feels just right for HAY – are, in many ways, what I work and live for. They are the reason why I do what I do, and what motivates me to get up in the morning. It’s a very special feeling of satisfaction going through your veins, and I get very emotional when it happens. The moment I stop being emotional in these moments, I would stop being capable of doing what I do.
Arcs Vase and Arcs Candleholder. Image Courtesy of HAY.
S: Where does the decision to include something in Hay’s range come from?
RH: This connects more or less directly to what Mette just described. It is a very intuitive decision-making process. What we can say is that we generally look for designs that are truly original, functional yet decorative. It’s about vision, and gut feeling.
S: How we live and what we live with has a lot to do with stories. With memories, with objects that have moved within a family, with images that we associate. When you create a world of products and objects, as you do, do you try to map these processes or do you really create a blank sheet?
MH: Hay House, our flagship store in the heart of Copenhagen, has provided us with new opportunities to build our brand universe because it is a living, physical space where we can see new designs in a real context. We would often bring prototypes there. So you could say that Hay House is our blank sheet, without it being blank – it’s the canvas we can draw on.
Image Courtesy of HAY.
Rey Chair. Image Courtesy of HAY.
S: How do you define love?
MH: Love is a big word, and it probably means a thousand different things, depending on who you ask. For me, there are different forms of love. The love for my children, the love for my husband, the love for my parents, the love for a friend, the love for a product – our company. I would definitely say that it’s one of the most important things in life – without it, life would be rather empty.
RH: I consider love to be the most powerful source of energy in the world, I’d even say that love itself is a form of energy. With it, you can build everything, including all the relationships Mette describes above. And that’s important, because I am convinced that you cannot really do anything on your own. To say it more poetically: love is like the sun, which is shining on us – and without it, there wouldn’t be any life in the world, so it’s a fundamentally important force. It’s the energy that connects people. Falling in love and being in love are iterations of that, but it all goes back to the fact that love brings people together. Without love nothing would grow, just as it wouldn’t without the sun.
S: Describe to me briefly how the creative process of your collaboration begins. Do you have an example?
RH: Each project is different, really, so there’s no set process. Sometimes we have a brief and reach out to designers we have already worked with, sometimes we are presented with a prototype that we love and then start to work on subsequently.
S: Why do people have such an emotional connection to furniture and the objects they surround themselves with at home?
MH: I can obviously only speak for myself, but there’s a reason why I enjoy working with everyday items so much, and that is because to me, it makes a difference when I surround myself with things that are beautiful. I also believe that people have a tendency of taking better care of the things they own if they are beautiful, especially if you are passionate about design.
Rey Stool. Image Courtesy of HAY.
S: Where are your ambitions? Do you have goals?
MH: I feel like I’m on this never-ending journey – I am quite sure that I’ll continue to generate new ideas and be creative for the rest of my life. So I am drawn to that, being explorative.
RH: After 20 years of doing Hay, what I discovered is that you need to find satisfaction and pleasure in the journey more than in the finished product or result. Finding satisfaction in what’s happening here and now. The times in which I have struggled the most were after great achievements. For example, after a very successful 2016 exhibition we hosted at La Pelota in Milan, which took HAY to the next level, and which was beyond what we could have imagined. The weeks after that were difficult for me, and I kept asking myself, “What’s next?” This is when I started to understand that it’s about the journey, more than the destination.
S: How curious are you?
MH: Based on the previous question: Very. Curiosity is one of the characteristics that define both of our personalities the most.
S: What are the things you can’t get past yourselves?
RH: Since I was a teenager, I’ve had a very extreme desire to win. That in itself is not necessarily a negative character trait, but having this fire burning inside of me has not always brought me and the people around me joy. When I lose, I blame myself for not having done better than I did and while it’s an enormous motivator on the one hand, it can also lead to situations where I can’t enjoy where I am. It’s something I am very aware of, and learning to appreciate the journey, as mentioned before, has been my way of working on it.
As featured in SLEEK 72 – LOVE. Available in Print and Digital.