Too Good Not to Tell the World About

DenHolm’s furniture is unlike anything you’ve ever seen. Using traditional tools that have remained unchanged for thousands of years, the company’s artisans tap into boundless energy, playfulness, and a sense of humour to manipulate solid stone into part Gaudí, part Brâncuși, and part Willy Wonka forms marked with their own irreverent signature stamp. These pieces bounce, grin, and wink at you, transmuting into different shapes depending on the angle you view them from, eschewing any uniformity, as if refusing to be constrained. It’s a contagious energy that’s reflected in the team of artists at DenHolm, the studio, that has grown around founder Steven JohnClark’s dynamic practice.

And now, as DenHolm is being pulled towards new and exciting endeavours, Steven is joining forces with fellow designer and director Lars Stoten, whose fashion background, expertise, and design milleu involves some of the industry’s most innovative names, includinghis roles as head of new design at Givenchy in Paris and designer at Proenza Schouler in New York. With the pair helming DenHolm together, their artistic collaboration will help sculpt a new multidisciplinary approach, providing a larger platform from which the studio can evolve, an opportunity to showcase and collaborate with other creative visionaries, and avenues to further explore their own artistic expressions.

Steven, I was thinking about DenHolm, and obviously with you being the founder, it’s almost like the studio is an au-tobiography of you. The name of the company is the small town whereyou were born and grew up in Scotland, but it also reflects your background in stonemasonry and fashion with the way you utilise different materials and textures. Tell me about your new partnership with Lars.

STEVEN JOHN CLARK: In an easy nutshell, the overall growth and place we’re at and want DenHolm to be, or where I would like it to get to ethically, I don’t think it’s possible to get to that point [without him]. I feel pretty lucky to have come across Lars when I did. It was a while back now, a couple of years ago, and it’s quite strange. Our two paths weren’t very in sync right from the moment we caught up with each other; it bounced in and out. In the end, we’ve come across each other right at the perfect time because Lars was looking for a change, and whether or not he thought it was going to be at DenHolm, I’m not particularly sure.

I looked back on what I was doing, and I realised I wasn’t actually doing anything forward-thinking. I wasn’t utilising my main skill set. It kind ofhappens, doesn’t it, when you break into a scene. The idea is that you need growth or it’ll just die. That’s kind of where I’m at right now.

This is super exciting.

Steven: Yeah, totally exciting.Lars, I was wondering what led you to DenHolm?

LARS STOTEN: I bounced about in the fashion industry for years, living in New York, and then moved to Paris for work. It’s funny, because I think mine and Steve’s paths were together, potentially, and then went apart and now have come back. We discovered a few weeks ago we both got accepted to Central Saint Martins in London, and neither of us stuck with it, which is quite funny.

A bit like Steve said, we’d talked about it on and off, about doing different projects or potential collaborations, with both of us coming from Europe and also having a creative industry output and career. But we strangely met via football. We just started chatting about similar interests and what we were doing, and I think the idea probably danced around for a while. I was curious because I like him, but then obviously the brand is phenomenal and the product is incredible, but it wasn’t really an area that I’d particularly worked in before. My focus has always been garment and fashion-related, really. We had a good chat, and it happened.

Steve often pulls my head in a bit. He’s a bit more grounded than I am—aren’t you, mate? We were sitting in a café, and I was in two minds about whether to stay in Australia. I was frustrated, I think, being in Australia, and he said, ‘Maybe that is the reason that you’re here.’ And I thought, Ah, fuck! I can take all that I’ve done, all that skill set I’ve acquired, and I can apply it to DenHolm, and it can be my baby too. What he said switched something [in me], and it really clicked over. I often tell that story to people when they ask about DenHolm. 

That mind shift can be such a change, can’t it? Just one sentence thatcompletely changes your perspective.

Lars: Yeah, Steve’s a bit of a guru.

Steven: A snake-oil salesman.

Lars: You should see him after a couple of drinks. He’s everybody’s therapist, everybody’s life coach.

I’ve got your email address now, Steve, so I may have to utilise that! So, for both of you, it feels like a bit of a fork-in-the-road moment. In what way is DenHolm going to evolve from the way it was practised previously?

Lars: Well, I think from my perspective, DenHolm’s product—what it is and what Steve is in regards to what he’s built to this point: his talent, skill,and craftsmanship—is insane. Were we in a perfect world where you could just sell to the village, we’d probably do extremely well and pay a lot ofrent. But I think the difference is twofold: potential is just a missed opportunity if you don’t do it; and the other is that with social media the way it is, we get these inquiries that are pulling us into this scaling. We’re not really pushing; we’re being pulled.

For us, we had to come together on quite a unified vision to make sure that whenever that question was asked, whether we do something or not, we can both just look at each other and we always pretty much 100% agree. I think we both have different practices and different ways that we approach collaboration, but the vision for the studio is the same—and that is that it’s too good not to tell the world about it, and it’s a unique story in itself. There’s a magic to what’s being done. It’s an archaic process of man–hand–stone, but it hasn’t changed. We’re still doing the same thing, using some of the same tools that [humans] used thousands of years ago.

I look at Steve—and even myself when I’m on the tools with the otherguys—and I think it’s strange and it’s a cliché, but it hasn’t changed. And when you’re learning a craft, as I’ve sort of been taking on a bit lately, it’s like ‘Wow.’ All the little intricacies Steven knows because he’s had that stonemasonry background that I’m taking on, I’m looking at how you can apply it. It’s the same way I would create a pattern or machine something. It’s a practice that evolves once there’s an application to it.

We’re ultimately an art studio. We are an art studio. We’re a studio of creatives, we’re a cooperative, we’ve got a bunch of other young creatives working with us. We lead them, but they’re all in that shell. The vision isnow feeling tangible.

What do you think, Steve?

Steven: When I started working in stone, there was no desire to work instone. I just made a plinth for one of Bobby’s friends [artist Bobby Clark, Steven’s wife]. I still had my work prior to that, but we all use our skill sets across the years that we’ve been involved in these types of industries and apply them to these types of materials. And I apply it to different scenarios as well, not necessarily just making a product, but who’s to say we don’t get involved in architecture or set design, do you know what I mean? I really don’t want to put any boundaries on what’s possible in terms of that type of collaboration.

The overall growth we’re trying to produce is with GAZZETTE and DENMART. That’s just the beginning of something quite special, I think. It needs a fair bit of work, and it’s going to need a fair bit of energy, but where that came about was that we were kind of tired of being hellbent stuck in the world of Instagram and the structure of Instagram, and felt there was just nowhere to go to scroll. Because sometimes you’re scrolling on Instagram, and you come across something, and you want more from that particular scroll, but then you just get stuck back into it. The idea behind the GAZZETTE was to obviously give ourselves a platform but then suck in other creatives and build this organic platform for cool shit. Stuff we can do to promote ourselves and promote other people.





I really love DENMART. I live in France and go to brocante everyweekend, and to me, DENMART really has that feel of vintage pieces alongside newer, current pieces. It’s a mismatch, but a good one, with an emphasis on well thought-out products, no matter where or what time period they come from.

Steven: That’s good feedback.

Lars: Yeah, this is exactly what we wanted, so basically, you’re stating our mission statement of when we started it. I go to France three or four months a year, so we do the same thing, we go rummaging. Last summer, coming back in October from when I was there, when I came back I made a box [filled with all the stuff I’d found], and DHL was picking it up, but they were a day late and I had to catch my flight. And I said to the super in my apartment in Paris I was going to leave it outside his door, and within forty minutes, between me leaving it and DHL coming to pick it up, someone managed to steal a box that was forty-odd kilograms.

That’s devastating!

Lars: I not only lost a lot of my personal clothes but also all of these really cool finds.

I also love how with the older finds on DENMART you’ve dated them, so it gives them an origin point and a backstory. Can I ask who found the Michael Jordan signed baseball and the story behind that?

Lars: That was given to me as payment [for something] that someone owed me money for. True story. Basically, I was owed money when I lived int he States, and this guy and his boyfriend had all of these little collectibles from his father, who was really into major league baseball and particularly Michael Jordan’s time when he left basketball to play baseball. I’ve got the original photo of the ball being signed, I’ve got all the certificates of authenticity, and I got it checked before I took it, because it was either take it or not get paid.

To me, DENMART was about us and about our heads, about curation and our gift shop, in a sense, so it had to go up on there. The GAZZETTE’s just the same thing; the GAZZETTE’s just an extension of the studio. Another creative output, another way to collaborate and put fingers in other pies. Like Steve said, it’s not just about materials and what we can sculpt—whether it’s steel or putty or, obviously, the limestone and glass—it’s any type of creative output: literature, writing, photography... We’re fortunate enough to have the ability to have an economic foundation to play with. And we want to play a shit ton more, so we need to grow thebusiness to do it.

You mentioned previously that you’ve got a partnership but you’requite different from each other. I wanted to reflect, personality-wise, on what your differences are and how you come together?

Steven: This is like a joint therapy session coming here right now! Who’s going to go first? Who’s going to say something? You might end this partnership now! 

(Laughs) Should I retract the question?

Lars: The thing that brought us together initially is that we’re very similar in certain ways. I think, in terms of domestic ideals and domestic ethics and how we raise our kids, that sort of stuff, funnily enough, is quite similar. But the differences in terms of creative approach [are that] I like to plan—I think because I’ve worked in the industry where there needs to be far more structure, especially running teams of merchants and designers. I think [with] Steve coming from a building site and a trade background, there’s alittle more license. It’s a balance, and sometimes he’ll say, ‘Lars, pull your head in. Let’s just do it.’ And I’ll say, ‘Let’s plan and do it systematically.’ Like I said to him last week, we probably should just get married and buy each other rings because we get on with each other almost better than we do our own wives.

Steven: I prefer a “Let’s just do it and see what happens on the other end” kind of approach, which can have terrible consequences sometimes. I’m the type of person that genuinely may have tried a new sealer on a finished table for the first time rather than on a sample. I’ve done that multiple times.The biggest change that’s happened to DenHolm up until this point was me coming out of [needing to finish] a product. I don’t finish anything. I don’t think in lines, which is really silly sometimes.

Lars: I love it. I think it brings an energy to the studio, and you can’t tap it. We’re in there, we’re all working away, and sometimes I’ll look around, and Steve will be hacking away at one thing, and George or Hayden or Joel [are doing something else], and we’re all at the tools doing something: someone’s pigment dyeing, Katie’s taking photos... I just feel that [it]wouldn’t be that way if Steve wasn’t the person that he is. If it was more structured, that would be reflected in the product, and it wouldn’t have the life that it breeds. You’d be taking something like stone and adding a structure to it, but it’s already fucking stone. It’s the fact that we can add that joyand playfulness to it.

Steven: I think we might have to get married after that! It’s so true. It’s just so dynamic.



When you see your pieces, you can see the energy of it encased into this solid matter. You really feel it.

Lars: I agree. Our design meetings are fucking mental.

Steven: (Laughs)

Lars: I love it. We throw ideas at each other, and we barely finish an idea before we’ve just solved all the world’s problems and Third World hunger, and then we go back to things that we can actually design together. I’ve never really worked in that situation before. I can take it home and breathe it a little bit and come back and have that conversation, and I know we’ll make the change on the day. (To Steven) I made some changes with that thing on that table I was working on today. (Laughs) You’ll see it tomorrow morning.

I just wanted to talk about the GAZZETTE a little bit because I feel like the people you feature embody the DenHolm spirit, even though they’re not necessarily part of the studio per se. Tell me who’s inspiring you at the moment? Who would you love to feature, and who have you got your eye on?

Steven: That’s definitely [one for] you, Lars.

Lars: The GAZZETTE’s a funny one for me, and this is going to sound really trite, but it’s like a sculpture; it’s a visual thing. The words are important, but the words are only important because they’re helping out with the sculpture, and that includes the people we have involved with it as well. I don’t want it ever to feel stifled. I have a lot of friends and colleagues that work in fashion, the press game, and a lot of fashion journalists and journalism involves those who are paying for your wages, basically. And I just wanted a medium where we could collaborate and talk openly to friends that happen to be creatives, and their friends and friends of friends, and have it structured in a way that felt like it could change depending on whomever we fucking decide it to be that month.

As you can see, there’s very little trend-driven design on it. We use different fonts because I think fonts and typefaces are as important as what’s written there itself. Why have a brand book when it comes to a magazine? It’s part of the art, it’s part of the concept, so the fonts are everything and everywhere. The people that we’re working with in it are generally people that I’ve worked with throughout the years. One of the articles is with Juan[Pozo], who is the casual footwear designer at Prada now. He was my intern at Proenza Schouler. And Siri [Johansen, former head of knitwear design for Kenzo] I’ve known for years. Others are just friends of friends. We did reach out to a couple of people, but to be honest with you, there doesn’t have to be too much reaching because of the networks we have. And when that dries up, hopefully it’ll just be a trickle-down effect when we do reachout. In terms of who I’d like on there, I don’t really look at it like that. I don’t really care, neither does Steve, about stars.

Steven: We were talking about putting a mechanic in it.

Lars: This is what we said: that if someone’s really good at fucking pooltiling, I want to know about what they do! I’m interested about the craft of what you do and the head behind it. A lot of the stuff we’ve got in thecurrent issue, we’ve gone a lot harder with a more intimate conversation with people.

Steve, in regards to what Lars said before, you’re moving into doing more of the beautiful sculpture under your own name. Tell me more about that. How are you feeling, and what are you excited about?

Steven: It’s actually what we’re both going to do. So, the idea behindDENMART and GAZZETTE is that we wanted to produce DenHolm but also our own work inside it so that you’ve got these constant loops that are happening. It’s going to give me a little bit more room to produce stuff that I can’t find at the moment. It’s all pretty bleak stuff out there because the world’s on fire, really. I just see it as a way to get stuff out. I don’t have a particular grand plan other than that. In the past, my artwork’s just fed backi nto DenHolm, so it’s just going to be the ability to keep things a little bit more separate and not worry about it. I can go off and do really different stuff that isn’t going to affect the brand per se, that’s totally randomly different, and now I’ve got the opportunity to go and do that.

Is there anything DenHolm hasn’t done that you’d like to see it evolveto do?

Steven: I’d love to build a building. I nearly have a couple of times, actu-lly, but that’s the type of work that I’d be interested in doing, or full-scalefit-outs of stores end to end, from everything that you touch, from the doorsto the door handles to the tiles to the mirrors to everything. Just Willy Won-ka stuff.

It reminds me of Le Corbusier in Chandigarh in India, where he even designed the potholes, which people are now ripping up and trying to sell.

Steven: And Gaudí’s work in Barcelona. [Doing something like that] would be insane.