We first encountered Dutch designer Tessa Koot earlier this year, at this spring’s Salone del Mobile – her whimsical furniture-cum-art the very last word in design/art boundary muddying. For her next act, the young designer has blurred those thinly treaded lines even further, enlisting the help of design and fashion photographer Lisa Klappe; together, they revel in their shared compulsion for bad taste.

Creating an aesthetic that’s parts fantasyland retroism, your grandparent’s smoke-stained shag pile, and frankly disturbing smack-head bedsit – the duo throw abused kids, dogs, smoking babies, car-boot sale art and Koot’s own fairytale furniture together; creating something truly magical in the process. Bad taste never tasted so good.

Showing until 28th October at Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven, Happy Birthday Tessa and Lisa is an eccentric assortment of design, photography and a short film by Klappe, in collaboration with film maker Niels van den Top and Tessa Koot, and makes a multitude of wrongs so very, very right.

Photography, Lisa Klappe