Designers & Keilhauer - Contract Furniture Designers | Keilhauer

Studio Black Box is a design consultancy co-founded by Aaron Duke and Paul Mazzotta. The studio believes in an immersive process and is obsessed with every detail of the design process.

Afteroom is a Stockholm-based design studio, founded and directed by Hung-Ming Chen and Chen-Yen Wei. Their mission is to create beautiful products that add value over time – designs to grow old with.

With 25 years of design experience, Andrew Jones is a Canadian furniture designer working for international manufacturers of contract, outdoor, and residential furniture.

Based in Vancouver, Bendtsen Design Associates' designs are created by finding a harmony between the contour lines of a product and the technical components that hold it together.

Christen Sorensen's long-lasting career resulted in a legacy of countless designs, including our Respons chair, which has remained in our catalog since 1990.

Derek McLeod is a designer known for his archetypal and usable pieces. In 2008, he founded Derek McLeod Design Inc., which provides professional contract and residential design services.

Ed Keilhauer entered the realm of furniture design through his knowledge of saddlemaking and upholstery. His skills and knowledge continue to influence Keilhauer products today.

EOOS works across furniture, product, and social design, with clients including Armani and Adidas. Their Keilhauer collaborations including Juxta, Cahoots, Unifi, Weve, and Agyl are all award-winning.

Form Us With Love is an international design studio founded in 2005. At the studio’s core lies a process that blends traditional creative practices with a lean, strategic application.

Since 1988, Helen Kerr and her team at Kerr and Company, a product and system development team, have been developing furniture and consumer products for the contract and retail markets.

Mark Kapka strives to develop thoughtful, well-considered products that address the situational needs of users while exhibiting a refined, understated approach to design.

Martin Ballendat has been a successful designer for 25 years now. Since 1995 he has been running his own design studio in Upper Austria.

Ayako Takase and Cutter Hutton are the creative partners behind Observatory, a Rhode-Island-based furniture and product design studio. Their work balances innovation and poetic simplicity.

Patty Johnson is a highly-awarded Toronto-based designer with a roster of diverse clients, including Keilhauer, Sephora, and the United States Agency for International Development.

Scot Laughton is a founding member of the design collective Furnace, and was named the Designer of the Year by the Toronto Interior Design Show in 2003.

Award-winning designer Thijs Smeets creates timeless products for brands like Keilhauer, OFS, Nokia and MaxMara—blending elegance, simplicity and smart solutions.

Tom Deacon is a graduate of the University of Toronto's Architecture program and the recipient of numerous design awards. His designs for Keilhauer include the Trua and Loon chairs.

Thijs Smeets

Thijs Smeets is an award-winning Dutch designer and engineer, known for creating smart, elegant solutions that stand the test of time. He founded Studio Smeets in Amsterdam in 2007, following formative years at design studios in both The Netherlands and New York. His multidisciplinary approach spans furniture, consumer electronics, tableware, and wellness products, always combining form with function.

From early on, his talent was recognized: as a student, he won his first design award for a pair of eyeglasses for MaxMara—still in production today. In 2010, his biodegradable tableware for Hampi Products received the Toon van Tuijl Award at the Dutch Design Awards.

Thijs’ designs have reached international acclaim. His reading light LiliLite became a viral success on Kickstarter, featured in hundreds of publications. His furniture collection for Gispen Today launched at Salone del Mobile in Milan and is now part of the collection of Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum of Modern Art. In 2015 he designed The Spot lounge chair series for Pode / Leolux, a timeless piece that has
been a best seller for more than a decade now. More recently, his Elara lounge series for OFS swept all major awards at NeoCon 2023, including Best Lounge Overall.

Thijs has collaborated with global companies such as MaxMara, Unilever, Sara Lee, Nokia, and leading furniture brands across the globe. His work has been exhibited from Seoul to Milan, and from Amsterdam to New York. Millions of his products have found their way into homes and public spaces.

With his latest work for Keilhauer, Thijs continues to push the boundaries of comfort, smart solutions, and refined simplicity—hallmarks of his timeless design language.

Designs by Thijs Smeets

Fyord