Butterfly turns Timo Boll's rackets into linocut art of his career

Timo Boll, record European champion and the greatest German table tennis player ever, ended his professional career in June 2025. His equipment sponsor of nearly three decades, Butterfly, wanted a farewell that matched a player famous for feel and artistry — not a standard tribute ad.

Say goodbye with the tool of the trade: eight of Boll's own rackets hand-carved as linocuts, each printing plate depicting one defining moment of his 29-year career.

Berlin illustrator Saydan Çelik hand-carved linocut motifs into the wood of eight original Butterfly rackets, each a one-off showing a key career moment. The rackets were presented to Boll after his final match, shown at Galerie Salon am Moritzplatz during Berlin Art Week (September 10–14, 2025), scanned 1:1 into print ads and a brochure, and auctioned on unitedcharity.de.

The work won a D&AD 2026 Wood Pencil for Jung von Matt HAVEL in Art Direction, the exhibition made a sponsor's thank-you into a public culture event, and sales of prints and the racket auction raised money for the children's charity Ein Herz für Kinder and the DTTJ Young Stars youth initiative.

When Timo Boll played his final professional match after the June 15, 2025 TTBL final in Frankfurt, table tennis lost the player the German federation calls its greatest ever — a record European champion whose near-30-year career ran entirely on equipment from Butterfly, the Japanese brand he had represented since he was a teenager.

Butterfly's farewell, created with Jung von Matt HAVEL, skipped the highlight-reel format. Instead, Berlin illustrator and mixed-media artist Saydan Çelik hand-carved linocut images into the wooden surface of eight original Butterfly rackets. Each racket is a printing plate and an artwork at once, showing one defining moment from Boll's 29 years, from his first steps in the sport to his last serve.

The rackets were handed to Boll in person after his final match — 'in these rackets there is not just wood, but heart, sweat and endless memories', he said at the handover — and then went public. Under the title 'Timo Boll – The Art of Table Tennis' they were exhibited at Galerie Salon am Moritzplatz during Berlin Art Week, September 10–14, 2025, alongside a collection of hand-printed T-shirts and limited fine-art prints.

The project was built to give its goodwill somewhere to go: proceeds from the exhibition and print sales went to the children's charity Ein Herz für Kinder, and the unique rackets themselves were auctioned afterwards on unitedcharity.de for DTTJ Young Stars, a German table tennis youth initiative. D&AD awarded the work a Wood Pencil in 2026 in Art Direction.

The medium is the message: Boll's artistry lived in his racket, so carving his story into the racket itself says more about the partnership than any film of his wins could.

Each racket is a unique physical object, which turns a sponsorship's worth of history into something collectible rather than a campaign that airs and disappears.

Using the rackets as actual linocut printing plates let the artwork extend into print ads, a poster and a brochure at full scale without redrawing a single motif.

Placing the work inside Berlin Art Week moved the farewell out of the sports pages and into a culture audience, exactly the expansion the brand wanted for a departing icon.

The charity auction structure meant every element — prints, shirts, the rackets — could convert public emotion into funding for youth table tennis.

A retirement is a product story for the sponsor who equipped every moment of it. Carving that story into the product makes the bond visible; a charity auction gives the goodwill somewhere to go.

The exhibition ran September 10–14, 2025 at Galerie Salon am Moritzplatz in Berlin as part of Berlin Art Week, with prints and hand-printed shirts sold for Ein Herz für Kinder and the carved rackets auctioned on unitedcharity.de for the DTTJ Young Stars initiative. Jung von Matt HAVEL's work received a Wood Pencil in Art Direction at D&AD 2026, and Boll's own channels and the German table tennis federation carried the project to its core audience.