yinjispace

INTERIOR
Arno Declercq
PHOTOGRAPHY
BIJISPACE边界人
WORDS
Hao Yue
EDITOR
Gina
Collection

Tucked quietly into the rhythmic cityscape of Antwerp, Arno Declercq’s studio doesn’t announce itself with grandeur. It doesn’t need to. What lies within is not a showroom, but a living archive—a spatial autobiography written in wood, metal, fire, and time. This is where Arno Declercq welcomed us during our design and art tour through Belgium, guiding us into a world shaped by hands, intuition, and an unwavering belief in form.

Arno Declercq is a Belgian designer and art dealer known for his sculptural, bespoke objects that merge primitive form with contemporary refinement. With a background in interior design and ethnographic curation, he launched his own line in 2017, drawing influence from tribal art, ancient architecture, and military structures. His pieces, handcrafted from Iroko and Belgian oak, are finished using the traditional Japanese technique of Shou Sugi Ban, creating a charred surface that enhances both durability and texture.

Declercq doesn’t hide behind design language. He speaks plainly, but with the confidence of someone who’s burned—literally—through hundreds of hours of wood and metal to develop his signature. He is a self-taught maker, driven by curiosity, not trend. “I never studied woodwork,” he told us. “I learned everything myself. No money, no tools. I made my own.” It’s not a romantic beginning, but a raw one. Yet from those modest origins, he has cultivated a language of design that now speaks fluently to luxury brands, world-class architects, and collectors from Los Angeles to Shanghai. Today, his work is represented by over 20 galleries worldwide.

Here, his work exists not as a fixed collection, but as a continuum. Early candleholders and bowls sit beside monolithic custom tables designed for LVMH or Hennessy. His pieces—monolithic yet tender, brutalist yet full of breath—occupy the space like still creatures, each with its own mythology. There is the Zoumey Collection, named after a forest in West Africa where Iroko trees once stood like ancestors.

His aesthetic, which he calls “the highest possible luxury,” is far from decorative. It is elemental. Stark, blackened forms grounded in Iroko wood, bronze, and burnished metal—an ode to African tribal craft, Japanese minimalism, Flemish discipline, and personal memory. From the agile-inspired metal rings to the ‘Bimbo’ collection (Swahili for “curved shape”), his work is a global conversation sculpted into heavy silhouettes. “Why black?” someone asked. “In black, you take away the noise. You see the silhouette. For me, shape is everything.” Black allows form to be seen at its most absolute—silhouette, line, volume.

Function never dominates form here, nor is it discarded. Rather, the two enter into a patient, ongoing dialogue. Pieces must feel right—not just to the client, but to Declercq himself. “Even if I don’t know where the piece ends up, I have to be comfortable with it,” he says. This integrity runs deep; even clients’ requests are filtered through a rigorously personal lens. If it doesn’t feel right, it doesn’t get made.

His approach to materials is deeply reverent. Every grain of wood, every burnished edge, carries the mark of the hand. There are no shortcuts here. Oak is air-dried for months. Surfaces are burned, sanded, and sealed with natural pigments and glue. Metal is cast in sand molds that retain the memory of wood. Nothing is hidden; even the undersides are treated with care. “You should be able to place my furniture in the middle of the room,” he said. “There should be nothing to hide.”

We wandered through the space one last time—past the armchairs with their Parisian fabric, the forest-thick layers of Iroko, the burnished black silhouettes catching the Antwerp light. Sometimes, you don’t need a conclusion. You just need to stand still in a space that’s been shaped with care, and let it leave its trace on you. It just sits there, in blackened stillness, solid and sure, waiting for the right eyes to see it.

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