STUDIO

Craft is a Cultural Act

SWITZERLAND & BROOKLYN

STUDIO

Craft is a Cultural Act

SWITZERLAND & BROOKLYN

Switzerland carries a culture shaped over generations. Its architecture, traditions, and ways of making hold knowledge passed from one hand to the next. Seitz draws from this continuum, carrying what has endured to the present.

For Kevin Seitz, that continuity was tangible from an early age. He grew up surrounded by locally made pieces, some dating to the 1800s, that remained as useful as the day they were made. Five generations of Swiss makers preceded him in Berneck, a town with its own history of ceramic production. Craft belonged as much to family history as it did to place.

Kevin met Rob van Wyen in New York in 2013. Six years later, they founded Seitz. Each background brings a different discipline to the studio: Kevin through product and industrial design; Rob through graphic design, creative direction, and storytelling. Their exchange connects the physical act of making with a broader understanding of culture and communication.

FIG. 1

Designers Rob van Wyen & Kevin Seitz

FIG. 2

Haus of Seitz loft; Williamsburg, Brooklyn

FIG. 3

Muotathal, Switzerland; home to our workshop

FIG. 4

A peak inside the Muotathal workshop

Today, the two work from their studio and showroom in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, inside a former babka factory built in 1910, moving regularly between New York and the workshop in Muotathal. Back and forth brings perspective. Each return makes the familiar visible again.

The familiar holds more than first appears. Seitz looks closely at what has shaped Swiss life over time, from regional typologies and architectural details to the ingenuity found in the everyday. The studio works with specialist makers to understand the knowledge held within these traditions and find new relevance for it through use.

What endures is rarely static. Forms evolve alongside the lives lived around them. Seitz continues this progression through reduction, preserving what matters and leaving room for what comes next. Longevity is considered in the same terms: something worth making should be worth maintaining, living with, and eventually passing on.

Seitz remains deliberately independent. Working at a considered pace leaves room for curiosity, close collaboration, and ideas to develop with purpose. Growth is measured through the work itself: what we choose to make, who we make it with, and the reasons for doing both.