The new Stone Age: DRAENERT
Brand story by Gerrit Terstiege
Immenstaad / Bodensee, Germany
28.01.21
Processing million-year-old stone slabs is one of the pillars of furniture manufacturer DRAENERT’s business, and the company boasts an impressive natural stone park with 150 varieties for planners to choose from.
A material millions of years old turned into modern furniture: In DRAENERT's natural stone park, customers can choose the colouring and grain they want for their unique design piece
A material millions of years old turned into modern furniture: In DRAENERT's natural stone park, customers can choose the colouring and grain they want for their unique design piece
בSo come! let us look afar, and seek what is our own, however distant it may be.’ You way ask, what these lines by Hölderlin have to do with design? Well, in 1968, designer Peter Draenert was also seeking out something of his ‘own’, and thus founded the still-family-owned furniture company which bears his name. What’s more, Draenert also wrote his PhD thesis on the subject of the eminent German poet while studying arts at university.
A happy coincidence led him down a completely new path, however; while in the Swabian Jura mountains, he came across a slab of oil shale that had inclusions of fossilised mussels and sea snails. Immediately taken by its natural beauty, he designed chrome-plated skids for it which transformed his find into a table.
The Immenstaad-based company stocks over 150 different types of stone and its experienced employees handle the vividly grained slabs with great care
The Immenstaad-based company stocks over 150 different types of stone and its experienced employees handle the vividly grained slabs with great care
×Natural stones are part of the DNA of his furniture-manufactory, and working with stone slabs that are millions of years old is still one of the key elements of the DRAENERT business today. The company owns an impressive open-air ‘stone park’ with 150 kinds of stone from which customers can choose: such selections can be entirely individualised, using a template the size of a tabletop, to ensure that customers get exactly the patterning they desire.
DRAENERT – a manufactory in the best sense of the word: Using a process that involves numerous steps, stone is transformed into an unmistakable object. Each table top is unique and tells its own story
DRAENERT – a manufactory in the best sense of the word: Using a process that involves numerous steps, stone is transformed into an unmistakable object. Each table top is unique and tells its own story
×Each stone slab is unique, with its own unmistakable character. This is a resource that should be treated with respect, and it is with this principle in mind that Dr. Patric Draenert continues to run the firm: ‘We have a long tradition of the careful application of tried-and-tested materials and manufacturing processes. Our craftsmanship and our patented techniques are what set us apart.’
Renowned designers such as Ron Arad, Hadi Teherani and Oswald Mathias Ungers greatly admire DRAENERT’s many years of experience in working with leather, metal, wood, glass and stone. As disparate as they might seem, the results all possess a poetic elegance, something entirely their ‘own’ – that thing once lauded by Hölderlin in his poem.
© Architonic
