Held Absence is a set of six minimalist furniture pieces by multidisciplinary designer Grace Prince, who works between Zürich, Milan and London. The collection was born during a materiality research residency in northern Kyoto, Japan, when Prince found a rough-hewn offcut of wood in a master carpenter’s workshop and decided to cast it in bronze. This fragment, which is never seen, but whose trace is left in every piece, became the central motif of her intuitive design process and collage-like experimentation. From this exploration, six objects emerged naturally: a desk, a coffee table, a set of candle holders, a side table, a low stool and a stool—each blending a distinct contrast of craftsmanship and materiality. Some, like the desk and the coffee table, merge hand-painted cast bronze with low-iron glass. Others, such as the low stool, mix painted steam-bent wood with polished stainless steel. 

This combination of techniques reflects the network of artisans Prince has built across the places she has lived and worked over the years. The glass is crafted by glassmakers in Berlin, the bronze is cast in a fonderia near Milan and the wood steam-bent in Basel. Together, the six objects rise as assemblages of the intimacy, trust and the conversations exchanged between makers and designer. Fragmented, sharply contoured, yet fragile in form, they form a constellation of absence—an exploded view of emptiness itself.

Held Absence was presented exclusively at Béton Brut Gallery as Grace Prince’s first UK solo exhibition, on view in London during February and March 2025.