Maarten Baas's Claims to Flame

"A good sculptor knows what the chisel will do," he said. "I feel more like I'm the director. I come expecting coincidences. But I am there to say, 'No, stop.' "

Murray Moss, owner of the eponymous shop at 146 Greene St., commissioned the new collection, which will be on view in its entirety through tomorrow, though individual pieces will stay longer. He explained the project not as a radical departure from norms but as artistic license. As for stamping the burned relics with Baas's name, Moss said each piece had become "this new thing. This is the conundrum. This is the point."

An additional conundrum is that each unique piece is for sale, as are the originals. For example, the Herman Miller company, for which the Eameses designed, sells the LCW chair in ebony for $499. The one-of-a-kind Baas is offered at $5,900.

It would be easy to cry gimmick, and move on. But Baas deserves his due. He has come up with a way to destroy the past with a technique that honors it while becoming something new. Few dining chairs have as much going for them. On a deeper level, there is the inescapable fact that Baas's burned and scarred objects are as perfect a metaphor for our awful times as an innocent could produce.

Baas is aware that his work is provocative, and he is mildly defensive. "Sometimes people say it's depressive," he said. "I don't mean that at all. I really think they are nice."

There is no getting around the images of destruction. Behind his head, a clock designed by George Nelson as a wheel of spokes, each ending in a ball, had lost all but three to the blowtorch. While posing for a photograph, Baas rested his hand awkwardly on a chunk of the Sottsass wall divider that had been severed during the firing and was now fixed forever where it had fallen, like a piece of ancient ruin.

There is undeniable quality to Baas's work. But what makes the vision uncomfortably apocalyptic is that designing is usually a positive pursuit. Something is created, a problem is solved, and perhaps beauty will be raised to a new level.

Baas's Web site, www.maartenbaas.com, reveals that the designer has worked ingeniously in paper and epoxy, porcelain, aluminum and "shade" (a sculptural pole tells time with shadows as the sun passes). But it is the "Smoke" collection -- and society's reaction to it -- that has propelled a new graduate into the spotlight of gallery and museum exhibitions in Milan, London, Tokyo and, now, New York.

Whether Baas has achieved new heights of beauty or is plumbing the depths of design may require another generation to sort out.