Founded by Design Academy Eindhoven graduates Job Smeets and Nynke Tynagel, Belgian/Dutch design company Studio Job crafts stylized and often gleefully impractical home furnishings. While Smeets brings an expressionistic, sculptural approach to the practice, Tynagel imparts a sharp graphic-design sense. Since joining forces in 2000, the pair — whose pieces were once accused of being ostentatious and self-indulgent — have since become celebrated design innovators.

Smeets and Tynagel take a uniquely symbolic approach to design; they select archetypal objects, such as a candlestick or a bowl, and play with scale and materials to create absurdist, semifunctional pieces. For their early Craft collection, they cast workers' tools in bronze, producing large-scale implements that could barely be lifted. Challenging mass production and functionalism, the couple also reaffirms the role of pure artistry with limited editions and sensual materials. Their recent Perished series features wood furniture inlaid with intricate animal–skeleton forms, and their Insects wallpaper and fabrics swarm with silhouettes of bugs. Released in May, the new Paper Furniture suite is a collection of elegant tables and chandeliers, made entirely of bone-white papier mâché.

Having attracted attention at design fairs around the world, Studio Job now works with high-end producers such as Makkum and Moooi. Smeets and Tynagel show at this year's Design Miami in the Moss Gallery booth, which celebrates their clever designs in a special exhibition, Robber Baron: Tales of Power, Corruption, Art and Industry . The cast-bronze objects evince an expected ornate decadence while hinting at the unsavory pitfalls of a robber baron's lifestyle. Pushing the creative limits of limited-edition furniture, Smeets and Tynagel infuse artistic curiosity into everyday objects.

-BR