By PENELOPE GREEN


Joost Van Bleiswijk, a 34-year-old Dutch designer, makes domestic objects like clocks and china cabinets out of steel that he sets outside for a month or so, until they accrue a nice coat of rust.

“Small raindrops and lots of wind looks best ? who knows why?” Mr. van Bleiswijk said recently. Soon, he’ll be working his pieces over with a blowtorch. “I think, in this time, people are bored with too-perfect things,” he said.

Rough-looking furniture, handmade by guys with power saws, is design’s new tack. “Butch craft” is how Murray Moss, the canny marketer, describes the work, which he has collected in a show at Moss, his store in New York City. It has a “rough-hewn, virile and heavy-lifting aesthetic,”

Mr. Moss said, albeit one that is sensitively rendered or considered. (The term “butch,” originally meaning notably masculine, was adopted by the lesbian community to describe a kind of hyper-maleness. ) There are boiled-leather vases cinched with wing nuts and riven by steel shafts made by Simon Hasan, a Brit on. Mr. Hasan uses a technique once deployed to soften and shape medieval body armor.

The “keel tables” by Oscar Magnus Narud, a Norwegian, have iron legs you whack in yourself with a mallet provided by Mr. Narud. “A lot of pegs and wedges and things like that are very simple but make a very sturdy piece of furniture,” said Mr. Narud, who works in London, sharing studio space with his Royal College of Art pal Peter Marigold. It is in contrast, he noted, to super-modern furniture whose value would plummet if its precious veneers were to be nicked.


Ruggedly masculine
crafts , in sync with
hard times.


Mr. Marigold builds stunning, blood-red tables and benches; they dominate the show at Mr. Moss’s store. Made in Norway, they were inspired by electricity pylons. Mr. Marigold used a circular saw and a single piece of wood to put together the tough-looking, archly artless pieces. “I think today people are very suspicious of a certain kind of ornament,” he said. “Like when I see laser cut, I think that’s just lazy design. This kind of restraint is important because you try to focus on the idea rather than the form.

” He recalled a conversation he had recently about English schools and how, he said, “If you’re creative and vaguely intelligent, you’re pushed into doing art, but if you are ? how can I put this? ? a bit thick, you’re pushed into doing craft.” You mean, like, woodworking class? “Yeah, basically,” he said.

“That’s what I wanted to do. But I got pushed into doing art.” Butch craft can also include nonfunctional work, such as the 1.2-meter-tall, broken-plane pieces made from Sheetrock by Aaron Raymer, from Louisville, Kentucky. The soft-spoken Mr. Raymer had been installing the drywall for years before he realized he could use it for his own work. “It always seems like I apply a blue-collar trade approach to the art world,” he said recently. “A lot of that comes from being in the labor force for a long time.”

(Mr. Raymer, now a stay-at-home dad, is 32; he received his master of fine arts degree from New York University in 2008.) Do tough times call for tough work? “A real collector might want pieces that carry the voice of right now,” said David McFadden, chief curator and vice president of the Museum of Arts and Design in Manhattan. “People are really eager to experience process, and something tangible,” he observed.

“We live inside our heads so much. There’s a sensuality to these designs, and it’s not in terms of comfort, but in a more basic, instinctive sense. The other part of marketing contemporary design is that everyone is looking for a younger audience of collectors. I think the butch craft design definitely has a resonance with a younger person. ” As for the butchness, he continued, “One man’s butch is another man’s femme. We attribute certain characteristics to design objects ? they are clues to personality .

” For the last 10 years, said Paul Johnson, a gallerist in New York, “design has been very futuristic, very flashy. I think what’s happened in the world has allowed the artists who make more affordable things with their hands to gain market share.” He added: “Some of these things take months to make.”

In an era defined by a taste for “conspicuous authenticity,” to borrow a phrase from Andrew Potter, author of “The Authenticity Hoax: How We Get Lost Finding Ourselves,” it’s easy to be cynical. Butch craft could be a reclaimedwood furniture collection made by bearded hipsters. Mr. Moss rejected the idea.

“It’s not a guy going out and making a bed of antlers,” he said. “It’s a progression toward a very elegant gesture. It’s just that the materials have this toughness.” He means his artists have thought hard to present rough.

Which leads us back to “butch.” “I used the term ‘butch,’ versus ‘masculine’ or ‘tough’ or ‘manly,’ because what I mean by this is work that is stereotypically considered manly, but expressed by a personality that is stereotypically considered sensitive or feminine.” In other words, an artist.