It always starts with one product. For Sebastian Herkner, it was the Bell table that served as his big break. “My aim was to present the perfect product,” he explains of the 2009 Salone del Mobile Milan introduction. His take on a table was to reverse expectations: Instead of a metal base and a glass top, “I did it upside down,” he says. That meant learning about the craftsmanship, “about the metal spinning and the glassblowing.”
The Offenbach University of Art and Design graduate credits a 2003 Stella McCartney internship in London with cultivating his passion for color and material. In 2006, he started his own company out of his flat in Germany, while still in school. And in 2011, just three years after his Salone debut, ClassiCon put the Bell table into production. “It was a good start,” Herkner notes, that led to other partnerships with big name companies—Moroso, Cappellini, Sancal, Linteloo, and Dedon, to name a few.
Herkner has now crafted upwards of 50 products with roughly 15 companies. It’s those partnerships, in fact, that have allowed Herkner to explore new design techniques and cultures. Most recently, he worked with German-based Ames Sala, founded by Colombian-born CEO and creative director Ana María Calderón Kayser, on an outdoor furniture collection that took him to South America where the beautiful, vibrant rhythms of Colombia inspired Caribe—a seat and back made of colorful plastic pipes nods to local techniques.
For each of his products, whether for La Cividina, an Italian manufacturer of tailored sofas and armchairs, or Gubi, a Copenhagen-based company known for its modern Scandinavian pieces, Herkner ensures that whatever he creates will not only fit the brand’s mission but also value traditional craftsmanship and materials. “Back in the studio, you start thinking about a concept, a story, experiences—what’s missing in the company,” he explains. Inspiration isn’t immediate either; it can take months to conceive the perfect piece. “You can’t press an idea,” he notes. “It’s very personal.”
