Willem van Hooff on Archive Cabinet.
An ode to the archive cabinet - a container for stories, old and new.
Willem van Hooff (b. 1992, Eindhoven) works across ceramics, wood, metal and constructed forms. His objects often read closer to recovered artefact than manufactured product - made through primitive techniques, traditional machinery and contemporary form-making. He is represented by Side Gallery and has shown at Salone del Mobile, Dutch Design Week and Dutch Invertuals.
For Project Materia 2026 he contributes the Archive Cabinet, a piece made entirely in Matek.
In the artist's words
This cabinet is an ode to the archive cabinet. Although the need for these cabinets is slowly dying, since our digital world no longer stores documents in physical form, I always dreamed of creating one of these classic furniture pieces.
In my work, I explore a fascination with objects that hold written or carved stories within them. This cabinet is not only a container for new stories - it also carries some of mine.
The piece
Medium: Matek™ · Dimensions: L30 × W50 × H78 cm
The Archive Cabinet sits within a body of work - Core Vessels, Amphora Vessels, the Ripped series - built around imperfection, forgotten techniques and the emotional weight of handmade matter. As a cabinet, it inherits a typology that is quietly disappearing from contemporary life. As a piece in Matek, it brings that typology forward.
