DESIGN INSPIRATION If there is one thing that defines Japanese aesthetics, it is that unique combination of seemingly simple lines and intricate craftsmanship. Dutch designer Roderick Vos took this centuries-old adage on board for his ‘San’ coffee tables. The oak veneer shows the saw marks—another typically Japanese design feature, celebrating the material and the artisans transforming it. ‘San’ is Japanese for ‘three’ and the three-dimensionality of these two-tier tables is underlined by the angle at which the top is set over the lower shelf. Inspired by the art of origami (paper folding), these angles allow you to create a wide range of interesting shapes, using two—or more

Dutch designer Roderick Vos (1965) graduated from the Design Academy Eindhoven in 1990, upon which he and his wife Claire, a textile designer, upped sticks and went to live in Surabaya, Indonesia. There, Roderick further developed his interest in Asian culture and its designs, an interest he was quite literally born with, being part Asian himself. Once back ‘home’ in the Netherlands, Roderick and Claire established ‘Studio Roderick Vos’ in beautiful Heusden Vesting, in 1999. In his design aesthetics, Roderick feels less connected with post-modernism than with the Platonic philosophy that every...