Furniture designer marina — a quick note to anchor this piece for readers.
Furniture designer marina: Quick notes
Belgian furniture designer Marina Bautier is known for her succinctness. Her pieces, all made of waxed oak, have no flourishes: they are a pure distillation of pleasing form and function. But in her own compound, she is voluble on how her work can be put to use: her studio, in a Brussels residential area aptly named Forest, is right next to her shop and café. And upstairs, there are two new guest apartments, all of which showcase the easy, conversation-filled settings Marina sees for her furniture.
“Every piece has been conceived with the ambition of finding an essential format,” she notes. “Simple as they look, great efforts have been put into the research and testing of how to arrive at the essential.” Come take a tour.
Photography by Stephanie De Smet, unless noted, all courtesy of Bautier (@marinabautier).
We reference Furniture designer marina briefly to keep the thread coherent.
The Shop and Café
Above: The Bautier headquarters occupy a 1925 industrial building that was once a mechanic’s garage and more recently a sculptor’s workspace and showroom. Marina opened the shop in 2013 and began inviting people to join her for monthly lunches that she cooked herself. Her “yearning to create a hospitable and welcoming environment” led to the opening of the Bautier café in 2021. 
Above: The shop is set up as a living space furnished with Bautier accessories and work by other small, independent producers, well as favorite architecture and design books and cookbooks. The Glass Cabinet holds Marina’s own made-in-England white Stoneware Plates and Leech Pottery’s Standard Ware Bowls. All of her furniture is made by a small family-run carpentry three hours away in northwest Germany. 
Above: Marina pairs her Café Tables,€970, with Børge Mogensen’s J39 chair, a Danish midcentury classic still in production—says Marina, “the Bautier collection doesn’t yet include a dining chair and so the”J39 chair has been adopted as a friend of the family.” When Marina writes about Mogensen, she could also be describing herself: “He examined the possibilities of developing historical and classical furniture types into contemporary practical and democratic furniture; simple wooden pieces which did not take up too much room or attention.” 
Above: On the menu: comforting, seasonal fare made from locally sourced ingredients. Here, red lentil Tumeric Dahl with Pickled Onions and a side of the café’s signature sour dough focaccia—recipes shared in the Bautier Journal.
