The winning smile of f maurer

On the one hand, f maurer is a name where you don't have to say very much about it - it stands for itself and with it in the international designer ranking. On the other hand, however, insiders will be curious to find out who is behind this label.
F stands for Franz, a self-confessed proud Burgenländer, but also a European who thinks in cross-border dimensions and celebrates glittering successes abroad. But like all other greats, he started small. One could say that he was born with a creative mind: From the very beginning, the top favorite was Lego bricks as a form of expression for constructive ideas, a development that was later continued with an apprenticeship as a carpenter, where he learned the basis of a craft. When, after a few years of practice in a photo studio, he managed the set construction and took on design challenges, he began to live out his own creativity, and his path as a designer took off.

The first tasks were - affectionately formulated - under the motto "Franz, the savior" when it came to creating useful things for the circle of friends that actually worked well. Not even in the initial phase did Franz Maurer compromise on half-measures: either completely or not at all. For him, the attraction of designing lies in growing into a task and along with it until it is so perfect that it is absolutely ready for the market. The focus is on people and thus on the target group that is to be addressed. One's own design personality sometimes has to make room for this. Accompanied by a sense of responsibility towards people, Franz Maurer likes to look at things from the perspective of those who are at the other end of the production process and will hold in their hands what he has sketched out with his constant companions pad and pencil, or what he has slept over again and - as he puts it in his own words - dreamed of. When it comes to design, irony and emotion are the salt in the soup; the "rogue in him" is always happy to discover the human element in things and to bring it into a reduced, essential form, whereby his favorite piece is always the one he is currently working on - be it tableware, lighting, furniture or entire living concepts. His special affection, however, enjoys, admittedly, the mono produced fire bowl Concave, which was awarded the German design Oscar, the Red Dot Award 2005. Franz Maurer is first and foremost a person with strengths and flaws, and the very biggest win for him - he says - is when it brings a satisfied smile to the lips of people who have his design in use. "Because that smile is my fee."
Barbara Jahn-Rösel is a freelance journalist in Vienna.