Sabine Marcelis

Sabine Marcelis (born 1985) is a Dutch artist and designer. She has worked with brands and companies such as Céline, IKEA, Isabel Marant, Stella McCartney, and Renault. Her style typically includes pastel colours, minimalist shapes, and materials such as resin and glass, while her work focuses on themes of transparency, reflection, and translucency. She has described her work as “an investigation of light, how it can create effects and atmospheres."

Early life and education
Marcelis was born in Alkmaar, Netherlands. She emigrated to Waihi, New Zealand, with her family at the age of 10. She studied industrial design at Victoria University of Wellington before returning to Holland in her early twenties to study at the Design Academy Eindhoven. Before pursuing a career in design, Marcelis competed in semi-professional snowboarding.

Work and career
After graduating from the Design Academy Eindhoven in 2011, she founded Studio Sabine Marcelis in Rotterdam.

Design
Marcelis has designed furniture, lighting, packaging, and accessories for brands such as Arco, Calico Wallpaper, cc-tapis, Established & Sons, La Prairie (brand), Mathmos, Natuzzi, and the Swedish furniture brand Hem.

She collaborated with IKEA on a collection of lamps and homewares which were commercialised in 2023.

In 2024, the Stedelijk museum in Amsterdam commissioned Marcelis to design a new piece. The result is an industrially manufactured stacking chair made of aluminium called the Stedelijk Chair.

Installations
In 2019, Marcelis was invited by the Mies van der Rohe Foundation to participate in its Interventions programme, a series of temporary installations in the Barcelona Pavilion. Her contribution was a group of pieces titled "No Fear of Glass" (a play on Josep Quetglas Riusech's 2001 book about the building "Fear of Glass").

She produced a temporary installation titled "Swivel" in St Giles Square in London for the 2022 London Design Festival.

In 2022, the Vitra Design Museum staged "Colour Rush! An Installation by Sabine Marcelis" in which she reorganised the approximately 400 pieces held in the Schaudepot exhibition warehouse collection by colour.

Exhibitions and collections
Collections holding examples of Marcelis's work include the Stedelijk museum in Amsterdam, Design Museum Gent, Centraal Museum in Utrecht, and the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam (in the Netherlands); the Vitra Design Museum in Germany; and the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV).

Her work has been exhibited at galleries such as Etage Projects in Copenhagen, Gallery Collectional in Dubai, Side Gallery in Barcelona, Carwan Gallery in Greece, Gallery Sally Dan-Cuthbert in Australia, and Design Miami. In 2023 she designed a unique "art version" of the Renault Twingo. It was shown at the Pompidou Centre in Paris.

In 2024 her collaboration with traditional Japanese lacquerware artisans Kawatsura Shikki was shown in an exhibition in Tokyo called Craft x Tech Tohoku Project. The work, a series called Yōkan, includes three pieces – two coffee tables and wall mounted mirror, all made using traditional Urushi lacquer on hand-crafted wood. The show was curated by Maria Cristina Didero and also included works by Studio Swine, Ini Archibong, Yoichi Ochiai, Michael Young, and Hideki Yoshimoto.

Teaching
She is a mentor for both the Women Bauhaus Collective and the Lexus Design Award, and also teaches at the École cantonale d'art de Lausanne.

Personal life
She currently lives and works in Rotterdam. Her partner is the architect Paul Cournet. They have a son who was born during the Covid pandemic. Marcelis observed that her piece called "Boa", a torus shaped pouf, is “helping him learn how to walk. And it’s also a perfect spot to safely place him if I have to quickly leave the room.”

Inspiration
At the age of 16, Marcelis was an avid snowboarder. In an interview with Surface magazine, she states that her use of snowboarding goggles made her realize the powerful effect colour has on one's environment. This helped her develop her work titled "Colour Rush" which was released in May 2022 at the Vitra Design Museum.

Specifically, Marcelis also stated that her inspiration stems from the architect Hans Hollein for his works with not only architecture but also his work with jewelry.

Awards

 * 2019 GQ Men of the Year Awards "International Artist of the Year"
 * 2019 Elle Deco International Design Award "Young Designer of the Year"
 * 2019 Designboom Design Prize "Best Design Newcomer"
 * 2020 Wallpaper* "Designer of the Year"
 * 2023 Elle Deco International Design Award "Designer of the Year"
 * 2023 Monocle Magazine "Designer of the year"