Martin Schatz learned carpentry and studied product design. After graduating from the Kunsthochschule Berlin Weißensee, he did design-historical research on the duration and transience of material culture at Hiroshima University.
During his time in Japan, he turned decisively to wood craftsmanship, and since his return to Berlin, he has increasingly devoted himself to the design and manufacture of furniture made of wood. Schatz works in a field of tension between the naturalness of wood and the artificiality of form. On the way to the handcrafted production, he designs wooden joints that determine the shape of his tables and stools.
Through independent wood connections, the parts join permanently into one form. For the wood craftsman and designer, the surface finish is crucial to the character of his works. Martin Schatz stains with Japanese indigo or tins crevices in the wood. His furniture is unique and defies mechanical reproduction. No milling cutter reaches into the sharp angles and undercuts of his form-fitting wood joints. He creates a tension between the naturalness of the wood and the colored artificiality of a strictly geometric form.
