‘It is quite important to see the pieces as a kind of protection for the wearer, perhaps a mix between an armour and also a physical expression of magical thinking, of “If I wear it, I become a little like it”,’ says Sylvain Rieu-Piquet, whose forthcoming exhibition, ‘Chimaera’ at Carpenters Workshop Gallery in London (opening 22 May 2025) will see the designer exhibit 40 pieces of jewellery and ceramics that articulate what he describes as a synthesis of language and form.

The exhibition name rightly suggests, with its inference of the mythical being in Greek mythology that is part lion, goat and serpent, that not only do Rieu-Piquet’s pieces possess an other-worldly quality, but also, they act as a wearable response to the idea of unrealistic ideas that are seemingly impossible to realise. ‘As an art student [at ENS Paris-Saclay], the memories I have were of feeling it was possible to think differently,’ he says. It is a belief evident in a jewellery practice that has experimentalism at its heart.

Rieu-Piquet’s interdisciplinary and visually omnivorous approach is also clear in his work. ‘I have done many different things, but there is a link, and for me it is drawing. I draw a lot. When I was very young, I was interested in anything that I found beautiful and I drew whatever it was. It could be an Italian baroque sculpture, a jewel, anything. I was not concerned with history or provenance, just the aesthetics. It was indiscriminate, totally natural. On the other hand, design is a method for me, a way to think.’

Success and accolades came early in his career: his reimagined Bic pens debuted at Design Parade Hyères and large-scale drawings were shown by Studio Liaigre in New York. However, he is now best known for his sculptures and jewellery, which allow him to explore the outer reaches of his imagination but through an approach rooted in design. ‘I began the jewellery after the ceramics, but for me the two are very close because the materials [clay and wax respectively] are soft and precise,’ he notes. He adds, ‘What I appreciate a lot from jewellery is the smaller scale. It is an opportunity to clarify style. So, you have to condense and be more considered with the choices made.’

Rieu-Piquet sees his jewellery practice and the ‘Chimaera’ series in particular as ‘a concentration of mineral, vegetal and animal’ and an opportunity to explore notions of fragility and vitality, elements that are present in the natural world and in people’s consciousness. They have the potential to be expressed in the one-of-a-kind pieces he creates. ‘The magic and tragedy of existence, the balance between strength and weakness’ are important, he notes.

Primarily in brass and bronze, and utilising silver and gold plating and patina, the collection features pieces that are set with sapphires, garnets and rubies. They vary in scale and oscillate between reflecting reality and subverting it. Of the rings in his series, Rieu-Piquet notes that they can just as easily be interpreted as a reptilian skin or a flower, and he is keen to note that the pieces are both absurd and imagined, allowing space for interpretation from the wearer. His methodologies also give his pieces a vintage quality: ‘The brass is a very cool material, as when I plate it and afterwards remove the plating, there is already the idea of lived experience in the finish,’ he says.

Although his work is increasingly collectable, Rieu-Piquet shies away from creating pieces that are ‘ego-driven artist-jewellery, with the bodies of others becoming a canvas for the artist’s work even if it is heavy or not comfortable’. Working from home allows him the time to spend with his three children and ‘to be in the right state, balanced in concentration and also relaxation’.

He adds: ‘When I am asked about my art, the question of family never appears, but for me it is a big thing.’ It's a neat riposte to an artist’s work being their sole raison d’être. And while Rieu-Piquet’s work is becoming an inevitable part of the jewellery canon, his is an insouciant approach to legacy. ‘It is complicated. In a few weeks I will have made another new piece and I will think the things of the week before are not at all important. Everything could be destroyed, perhaps it will be, and everything will eventually come to dust and it is not a problem.’

In ‘Chimaera’, Rieu-Piquet distils the fleeting truth of beauty, objects and life itself and how our perceptions and desires can be both illusory in thought and tangible in the wearing.

‘Chimaera’ is open from 22 May – 12 July 2025, carpentersworkshopgallery.com

The late Terry Castro’s unique creativity took shape in rich jewellery design that encompassed his interest in mortality, masks and the animal kingdom. His jewellery brand, Castro NYC, celebrated these eclectic inspirations in one-of-a-kind pieces that doubled up as wearable artworks.

Following Castro’s passing in 2022, his son Sir King Castro has taken the reins, making a pivotal moment for the company, now highlighted in a London exhibition at Carpenters Workshop Jewellery, featuring more than 40 works, including previously unseen pieces.

‘I’m excited to show some of the archival pieces from around 2006-2008, a period when Castro first moved to New York and began developing the animal skull and mask motifs that define much of his work today,’ says Sir King Castro. ‘Additionally, we are displaying his later works, such as the “Money” brooch, made with Muzo emeralds, which represent an elevation in craft and concept that happened as a result of moving the practice to Istanbul later in his career.’

Castro’s carefully conceived pieces intertwine precious metals and gems into fantastical, magical forms. ‘I want to continue Castro’s legacy of futurist innovation by connecting with the new generation and culture that I’m a part of,’ Sir King Castro adds. ‘I aim to expand the influence of Castro’s practice by working across different mediums and worlds.

‘As an Afro-Mexican designer, I hope to carry on the tradition of working with the sacred power of gemstones and continue my father’s legacy of crafting exquisite works while shifting the collective consciousness. The world is finally ready to recognise Castro’s work as high art. He was ahead of his time, and we're only just catching up.’

'Castro NYC: Retrospective' is at Carpenter's Workshop Gallery, London, from 8 October 2024 to 11 January 2025

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‘HunRod is bold… and versatile,’ says Michèle Lamy of her collaboration with jewellery designer Loree Rodkin. She has built on the striking forms of the first ‘HunRod’ collection to create ‘HunRod Gold’, currently being exhibited at Carpenters Workshop Gallery’s Ladbroke Hall, London.

The rings are intricately drawn pieces of wearable armour, crafted in 18ct yellow and white gold and inspired by the symbols of the zodiac. Drawn from thick and curving forms, they cut sensuous, oversized silhouettes. ‘Our rings had to be this size to accommodate the 12 easts of the Chinese Zodiac,’ Lamy adds. ‘In the Chinese Zodiac, I'm a Monkey, and I am very happy to be because it appeared in the Zhang Guo period more than 2,000 years ago. I'm turning 80 soon, and the Monkey sign is for the clever, creative, and mischievous.’

Zodiac jewellery by Michèle Lamy and Loree Rodkin

Playful and wearable, the jewellery is a tribute to the friendship between Lamy and Rodkin. ‘I’ve known Loree since my first days in LA, over 30 years ago, through her magistral star manager,’ Lamy says. ‘She was also a friend of my restaurants. I looked at her first jewellery pieces and bought them. Years ago in Paris, I developed the concept that became Hunrod and saw her looking at it. I immediately knew it was the time to jump on her and co-design with her, especially with her eye, talent, and fab atelier. I’ve always enjoyed our friendship.’

The resulting jewellery is presented alongside the furniture of Lamy’s partner in art and life Rick Owens, whose pieces makes for a sculptural foil, reflected in the clean lines of ‘The Plug Table Black Plywood’ (2011) and in the patinated bronze of ‘Hunstool Gold’ (2022), itself a tribute to Lamy, referencing her nickname, ‘Hun’.

Says Loïc Le Gaillard, co-founder of Carpenters Workshop Gallery: ‘By displaying the groundbreaking jewellery work of Michèle Lamy alongside Rick Owens’ furniture pieces, the pair’s common language and shared artistic perspective is brought to the fore. This allows their work to be seen in conversation, adding a distinctive layer of artistic synergy to the presentation. This collaboration not only accentuates the avant-garde nature of Lamy’s jewellery and Owens’ furniture, but also creates an immersive experience that brings the viewer into dialogue with the artists.’ 

Carpenters Workshop Jewellery presents ‘HunRod Gold’, in London until 26 April 2024

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'Vas Florum' is a new exhibition of flower vases by Marcin Rusak, on show at Paris' Carpenters Workshop Gallery until 20 December 2023. The Polish designer's first solo show in the city, the display features some of the recurring themes of his career, namely the use of flora as a design material, inspired by Rusak's family business as flower growers. 

'Vas Florum': new flower vases by Marcin Rusak

Presented through a display that evokes a museum showcase, the new pieces offer a glimpse into Rusak's design approach, which mixes childhood memories, our relationship with nature and ongoing concerns over environmental and societal changes. 

Flowers have been part of Rusak's work ever since his graduation display at London's Royal College of Art and subsequent design explorations as part of his winning the Perrier-Jouët Arts Salon prize in 2015. 'I am the grandson and son of Warsaw flower growers. My family has been producing flowers for over a hundred years, but this family history ended when I was born,' he recalls. 'Working with flowers was initially a way for me to transcribe this ghostly past of abandoned greenhouses, rusted metal and broken glass, zinc planters, pumps and other machines with unknown functions, all abandoned and frozen in the landscape.'

Although his career spanned different media including metal, flowers are a theme and material he keeps going back to, creating small objects as well as flora-infused furniture designs. 'My work lies at the intersection between value, ephemerality, and aesthetics,' he explains. 

'Once flowers have fulfilled our decorative or symbolic needs, they become a reminder of life that we no longer want and are thrown away. Transformed into my materials, they regain meaning and become an integral part of a work that magnifies the very reason they are thrown away in the first place: their very temporary nature. My creations have their own lifespan, which I have observed and amplified over the years.'

The new collection on view in Paris is the latest result from Rusak's ongoing experiments with flower-infused bio-resin, a method that took several years to develop. The whole process is done by hand, from collecting and processing the flowers to finishing the material. 

'For Vas Florum, I’ve adapted the process by taking inspiration from the material qualities of ancient Egyptian glass: the sanded finish of  the sculpture takes on an enigmatic, misty appearance that blurs the flowers captured inside, emphasising their ephemeral qualities,' he says. 'In the resulting sculptures, there is much more focus on the individual message conveyed through the considered selection of plants. With this, the pieces offer a polyphony of narratives that can be read individually or collectively, offering a glimpse to my everyday musings.'

'Vas Florum' is on view until 20 December 2023

Carpenters Workshop Gallery
54 Rue De La Verrerie
Paris

marcinrusak.com
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Smooth, sculptural forms have become synonymous with Jacqueline Rabun’s works over the last 30 years, and are now the subject of a major new exhibition celebrating the jewellery designer’s career. ‘Jacqueline Rabun: A Retrospective’, at London’s Carpenters Workshop Gallery, unites over 250 of Rabun’s pieces with drawings and photographs from her archive.

‘It will be both exciting and emotional to present designs from my archive alongside my current work in one space,’ says Rabun. ‘This exhibition represents a personal journal of my work, connecting to different chapters of my life from the past 35 years. It is a human experience with the “Offspring” collection reflecting my chapter of having my child whilst the ”Mercy” collection is a look into a more challenging period of my life. It is an honour to inaugurate Carpenters Workshop Jewellery's new flagship space with my largest ever retrospective show, in this great cultural city where I resided for 32 years.'

The exhibition traces the path of Rabun’s career, from the early work she created upon her move to London in 1989 through to her long-term collaboration with Georg Jensen and her latest pieces created exclusively for Carpenters Workshop Gallery.

The development of her style, from her first raw pieces in precious metals to her later streamlined silhouettes, is here encompassed in a series of sensual jewellery pieces.

 ‘The exhibition is a journey from “Raw Elegance”, designed in 1990, through to “Metanoia”, which I designed especially for Carpenters Workshop Gallery in 2021,’ Rabun adds. ‘It is visible to see how my design language has evolved yet always remained sculptural and organic.’

‘Jacqueline Rabun: A Retrospective’ takes place 20 September –18 November at Carpenters Workshop Gallery, London

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Carpenters Workshop Gallery has unveiled a new limited-edition collection of sculptural jewellery. The collection, revealed at Design Miami/Basel, unites a curated selection of artists, designers, architects and specialist jewellers and comprises adornments that blur the lines between design and art.

Jewellers including Alice Cicolini, Sylvie Auvray, Hunrod, Hermien Cassiers, Kayo Saito, Alessandro Palwer, and Ane Christensen interpret figurative and architectural themes in carefully formed, miniature artworks. For some designers, it marks the first venture into jewellery design – Aldo Bakker, who had always refused requests to make jewellery for others, is seduced by the medium for the first time here.

Carpenters Workshop Gallery jewellery unveiled

Despite the eclectic nature of the group, all the jewellers have something in common, says Caroline Van Hoek, Carpenters Workshop Gallery’s head of jewellery. ‘They all share a commitment to meaningful and exceptional artistic practice. Carpenters Workshop Jewellery doesn’t have a main aesthetic, neither does the main Gallery. It’s very much about the artists, their practice and their relevance in their field. They all differ tremendously but have in common that do they create works that are sculptural and artistic.’

The jewellery celebrates intricate and sensual forms, from Belgian jeweller Hermien Cassiers’ hypnotising plays on geometry knitted in her own gold alloy formula, to Japanese jeweller Kayo Saito’s works that nod to calligraphy in their fluid silhouettes. French artist Sylvie Auvray has created over 20 silver rings that take on a mischievous life of their own, while Alice Cicolini weaves Eastern influences into her curved designs.

‘In keeping with Carpenters’ ethos of blurring the boundaries between art and design, the main criteria was the artistic expression and the importance of [the designers’] work within the jewellery world,’ adds Van Hoeck. ‘All the selected artists are exceptional in their creativity and practice, and are doing something new that will excite jewellery collectors.’

INFORMATION

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Korean designer Wonmin Park unveils ‘Stone & Steel’, a new body of work presented at Carpenters Workshop Gallery comprising ten new sculptural works handcrafted in Japan. Four years in the making, the tables and one chair in the series comprise bases made of volcanic rock – treated using different techniques and mixing raw, smooth and chiselled textures – and hand-cut steel tops.

Wonmin Park’s stone and steel furniture designs

A departure from Park’s usually precisely geometric work, the new collection marks a moment of growth for the designer into new creative and technical territories. ‘I like to use straight lines, I don’t want to design curved lines myself,’ he explains, citing works like the aluminium tables of the ‘Plain Cuts’ series (his debut in metal furniture, in 2017), compositions that simply combine slabs of the material into furniture forms. ‘Stone & Steel’ is a continuation of that first foray into metal furniture, and again, the designer assembled the materials with minimal interventions. 

The table tops seem to fit effortlessly onto the stone, the surface of which has been smoothed to become mirror-like and emerges, impossibly, from the precisely cut steel. The tops’ silhouettes mostly follow the rocks’ forms, in accordance with Park’s limited-intervention approach, which gives the pieces their strong organic aesthetic.

For the bases, Park kept the stone’s expressive shapes and applied traditional Japanese chiselling techniques to create texture that contrasts with the rusty, oxidised surfaces; the combination of textures adds to the pieces’ richness. The designer looked to the Japanese and Korean artists of the 1960s Mono-ha movement for inspiration, citing their use of natural materials as an influence on his creative process. 

‘All the texture in the stone is actually created by unexpected accidents and it’s never the same, and this is so intriguing to me,’ he says. ‘The cut of the stone is vital to the success of each piece. Its linearity is something that nature cannot produce – only humans work in straight lines. The steel adds dimension to the cut line of the stone and extends it further into space, creating volume and balance.’

INFORMATION

Wonmin Park’s ‘Stone & Steel’ is on view at Carpenters Workshop Gallery until 30 November 2021
wonminpark.com
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ADDRESS

4 Albemarle St
London W1S 4GA

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By the time Vincenzo De Cotiis went to the Politecnico di Milano to study architecture in the late 1970s, Italy’s radical architecture movement was at the forefront of the country’s design culture. In that context, it may seem surprising that De Cotiis was more inclined to arte povera’s use of rudimentary materials. ‘I feel tangent to everything that is artistically expressed through materiality,' says the Italian architect and designer, who set up his studio in 1997. ‘Its recyclability has always been part of my artistic path, like fibreglass.'

For his new collection ‘Éternel,’ launched at Carpenters Workshop Gallery in Paris, De Cotiis has produced 18 pieces, including dining and coffee tables, chandeliers, stools and a lounge chair. Simultaneously playing with the vocabulary of furniture and sculpture, the collection combines solemn materials such as iridescent cast aluminium and brass with eastern influences, such as lanterns made of glass with silver foils and cabinet surfaces that emulate Japanese ceramics.

‘I have always been passionate about Japanese architecture,' says the Milan-based designer, whose first projects in the 1980s were already infused with eastern references. ‘Today, I find this influence in the attention towards the minimal and the intimate.'

While it may be the designer’s first solo presentation in France, it certainly isn’t his first collaboration with Carpenters Workshop Gallery. In 2018, the London headquarters presented ‘En Plein Air,’ a 20 piece-strong solo display inspired by late 19th century al-fresco painting.

Meanwhile in Venice, to coincide with this year’s Art Biennale, his 17-metre-long wall made of recycled fibreglass and silver plated brass can be seen at the group exhibition DYSFUNCTIONAL, at Galleria Giorgio Franchetti alla Ca’d’Oro, alongside the work of Rick Owens and Michel Lamy, Virgil Abloh, Studio Drift and Ingrid Donat, to name a few. 

‘I always seem to find myself somewhere between the functionality of the object and its abstract presence,‘ the designer and architect says of his long-standing artistic inclination. Of his new pieces — which also coincide with the launch of a book published by Rizzoli Electa — De Cotiis says that ‘their function is perhaps the last thing to be considered.’

INFORMATION

‘Éternel’ is on view until 21 December; carpentersworkshopgallery.com

ADDRESS

54 Rue De La Verrerie,
Paris, 75004

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The title of Aldo Bakker’s first show with Carpenters Workshop Gallery, ‘Slow Motion’, could actually be a description of the way Bakker designs: alone in his Amsterdam studio, with no creative assistants. It perfectly applies as well to the way Bakker’s pieces are constructed, often using his favoured urushi, a traditional Japanese lacquer made from tree sap and applied in up to 30 individual layers, each left to dry for a day or two before being polished by hand, resulting in richly textured surfaces with subtle plays of colour. And it also refers to the time it takes to properly take in and appreciate his work; the reveal is far from instant.

Bakker controls not only the process of designing and making, but of seeing too: these are pieces to encourage pause and hesitation. Unlike so many gallery edition pieces today, they whisper rather than shout. And as you can’t quite see how their forms work at a first glance, you need to spend time with them, follow the curves and their intersections with straight lines, and properly take them in.

Take, for example, ‘Weight/Wait’, a stool with a C-shaped base and a saddle-like seat made in either basalt or foam coated in urushi ishimeji (lacquer imitating stone surface). Three very straight lines collide at the back, while convex and concave surfaces meet on the seat, which cantilevers out. The ‘Sitting’ table, crafted from black marble or ‘white’ urushi (actually beige, which lightens with age), is cut from one piece, nodding to the ‘Anura’ stool, which Bakker fashioned from alligator skin for Wallpaper* Handmade in 2012 (W*161). Bakker calls the new table ‘sharp, clumsy and humorous’. There are three right angles and flat planes, and junctions between the outer shape and the inner shape that are to be discovered.

The show is made up of 17 pieces, of which 14 are brand new, and three reinterpret existing designs in new materials. Bigger pieces include his 2017 console table in green urushi or brown quartzite, ‘a very dense and quiet’ stone that allows long, monumental pieces. Its chunky form, where curves and flat planes meet harmoniously, is typical of Bakker’s work. There is a red quartzite dining table with a top and base that widen in the middle, offering up more visual trickery, while a 2m-long bench is cut from a single piece of stone; I watched five men struggle to shift it during our photo shoot. It is called ‘Long Lasting’ and Bakker says ‘the weather will have almost no effect on it’ if it is left outdoors. There are also four smaller items, including ‘Newel’, a vessel in gold-plated fine silver. This is a new 12-sided piece, fluted like the facets of a pillar, but rising at one edge as it ‘starts to question itself ’, says Bakker.

Carpenters Workshop Gallery, with locations in London, Paris, New York and San Francisco, has offered Bakker a truly international showcase, new production capabilities and generous budgets. It’s been a four-year journey since founders Julien Lombrail and Loic Le Gaillard first approached Bakker. ‘The obvious beauty of Aldo’s pieces makes it impossible not to want to represent him,’ they say. ‘Strong, singular, elegant and absolutely sensual, his furniture takes a new original direction, unseen in the design world.’ As originally featured in the May 2019 issue of Wallpaper* (W*242)

INFORMATION

‘Aldo Bakker: Slow Motion’ is on view until 15 June. For more information, visit the Carpenters Workshop Gallery website and the Aldo Bakker website

As the boundaries between design and art blur ever further, this year’s Venice Biennale welcomes design fair NOMAD (for a few days in September) and Carpenters Workshop Gallery for a full six month stint. Makers such as Vincenzo de Cotiis, Maarten Baas and Studio Job have barely closed the shutters on Salone del Mobile in Milan before they open them again in Venice. And they are not the only ones: for its biennale debut, Carpenters Workshop, in partnership with Lombard Odier, has brought a further 14 of its designers to Galleria Giorgio Franchetti alla Ca’ d’Oro, a palazzo with a big presence on the Grand Canal.

‘We decided to stage (our show) “DYSFUNCTIONAL” to question what defines an artwork; why can art be non functional and when does design become art?’ asks Carpenters Workshop Gallery co-founder Loïc Le Gaillard. ‘By creating this dialogue, we want to follow the spirit of Baron Giorgio Franchetti, who rejuvenated Ca’ d’Oro in 1894 and was an avant-garde collector.’

All the new works were created in response to either Venice or the decorative palazzo. Spanish designer Nacho Carbonell has transformed the courtyard and its 15th-century mosaics into a sculptural forest of light; Ingrid Donat’s Klimt Cabinet refers to the palazzo’s former golden decorations, its façade inspired by the patterns of Venetian stained glass windows and lace from the island of Burano; Studio Drift’s frame of light around San Sebastian, a painting from 1506 by Andrea Mantegna, highlights its star position within the museum’s collection (Franchetti enshrined it in a purpose-built marble chapel).

As ever, Venice and its shifting waters were an inspiration; Mathieu Lehanneur’s coffee tables and stools come in green marble and granite shades that echo the waves of the lagoon and Virgil Abloh, who has created a collection of ‘sinking’ pieces in polished bronze in response to Venice’s acqua alta (high tide).

Rick Owens and partner Michèle Lamy, who usually moor up for the Biennale in a boat complete with its own boxing ring, have taken up residence in the gallery’s garden instead. Lamy asked a few fellow Carpenters Workshop contributors to create punch bags in response to the question, ‘What are we fighting for?’ We can expect no shortage of answers.

INFORMATION

‘DYSFUNCTIONAL’ is on view from 8 May – 24 November. For more information, visit the Carpenters Workshop Gallery website

ADDRESS

Galleria Giorgio Franchetti alla Ca’ d’Oro
Calle Ca’ d’Oro 393
30121 Venice

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Basking in the natural light of the Carpenters Workshop Gallery New York, 19 floors above the bustle of Fifth Avenue, lies Dutch artist and designer Aldo Bakker’s contemplative new solo exhibition, ‘Slow Motion’.

Aptly named, Bakker’s first exhibition at the gallery is a thought-provoking collection of sculptural pieces derived from poetic reinterpretations of furniture. While differing in scale, form and materiality, they reveal the designer’s urge for a slowed-down way of seeing. ‘We called it “Slow Motion”. We could’ve called it “Real Time”,’ Bakker reflects, and it is precisely this mindfulness – the journey it takes for the viewer to grasp the essence of Bakker’s work – that makes the exhibition, on view until 22 June, particularly enticing.

The first piece to greet the eye is the glistening red stool 4prts, dressed in the designer’s favoured material, Japanese Urushi lacquer. But the exhibition’s main draw is the way the pieces interact with each other and with the habitat. A series of low rounded forms (two Sitting Tables, three Weight Wait stools and two 4prts) are dispersed throughout the space and balanced by a series of long monolithic pieces like the stone Console Table, the Urushi Green Table and the grey quartzite low bench Long Lasting, all of which add a welcome horizontality to the exhibition’s dialogue.

But the ongoing conversation is mainly embodied in the relationship between the gold-plated silver pourer, Pivot, and the Urushi aluminium table, Flat Brown. Perched on a slanted shelf (Bakker’s way of showing that the lid is ‘hanging loose’), Pivot converses with Flat Brown. Both are set against the same warm yellow backdrop, both are supported by platforms of the same thickness, and Bakker mentions, ‘it wasn’t a long struggle’ for both pieces. Typically he can spend over a year developing a piece, letting ideas brew in the back of his mind until the time is right for them to ‘come through’.

‘I mainly think about my pieces,’ Bakker says, ‘as long as I keep it in my mind, it stays flexible.’ Incidentally, ‘Slow Motion' is also a reflection of the lengthy, meditative process behind each piece. Bakker’s partiality to Urushi (the application can take up to 30 layers, each left to dry for a day) is somewhat telling of his unhurried approach.

‘Slow Motion' truly captures the designer’s instinctive attitude and creative integrity. Ultimately, Bakker says, 'Let's think twice before we put something into the world.

For a full profile on Aldo Bakker and his shape-shifting designs, see the May 2019 issue of Wallpaper* (W*242), on newsstands now

INFORMATION

‘Slow Motion by Aldo Bakker’ is on view at Carpenters Workshop Gallery until 22 June. For more information, visit the website

ADDRESS

693 5th Ave
New York
NY 10022

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In the space of seven years, David Raffoul and Nicolas Moussallem have evolved from fresh-faced newcomers into the brightest stars of the Lebanese design scene. The duo first met at Beirut’s Académie Libanaise des Beaux-Arts in 2007 and, finding an instant connection, travelled to Milan together after graduation to study industrial design, then set up their studio, David/Nicolas, in Beirut in 2011. Just three years later, the duo were collaborating with Agresti on a sculptural safe for Wallpaper* Handmade (W*185), exhibiting pieces with Milanese gallery Nilufar, and winning awards. Now, once again, they are on the brink of another defining shift in their careers, with their first solo exhibition in the US, following on from their European debut in 2018.

Called ‘Supernova’, the showcase was developed with Carpenters Workshop Gallery in Paris. The collection features a series of cabinets, rugs and tables – functional items, sure, but the ambitions behind them are cosmic. ‘The death of a star results in either a supernova or a black hole,’ says Moussallem. ‘The supernova is when a star explodes and all its debris is sent out into space, only to fuse again and create new stars. Here, death is just a transformation.’

The designers see this celestial cycle as a metaphor for Beirut, where they live and work. According to legend, the city has been built and destroyed seven times during its 5,000-year history. ‘We call it the phoenix city because it always rises from its ashes,’ says Moussallem. In spite of recent troubles, its people remain hopeful. ‘We imagine the future to be linked to the past,’ he says. ‘Everything we do is related to time.’

‘What makes us work well together is honesty, and a common dream.’

The designs for the show embody the ‘retrofuturistic’ concept that the pair have been developing since the early days of their practice. It is not, they point out, the same retro-futurism that fascinated illustrators and filmmakers in the 1950s and 1960s, but a more personal approach with recurring themes and tinges of nostalgia. The duo’s industrial design background is barely evident, but it nevertheless informs their work: ‘We have this industrial way of thinking, how to make from one thing a declination of many things, a system,’ says Moussallem. ‘It’s like music: you learn the basis and then you compose your own, which can become anything.’

‘Supernova’ comprises two distinct collections. The Monocle series of cabinets, a spin-off from a piece the designers exhibited with Nilufar in 2016, riffs on the ‘equilibrium of masses’ and features a solid wooden base with a lighter, glass vitrine on top. The other series, Constellation, explores how a scientific phenomenon can be translated into objects.

The new pieces conceptually illustrate the transformation of the cosmos: an explosion is reproduced as geometric speckles of metal neatly applied onto a marble surface, a lunar eclipse mimicked by a table with overlapping tops in marble and glass. Raffoul and Moussallem’s work is usually linear and sleek, so working with volume is new territory. ‘[The pieces] look like spaceships or robots,’ says Moussallem. The space theme is also reflected in the choice of materials, which includes glass (derived from sand, a further nod to the supernova trajectory) and travertine, whose porous surface reminds the pair of the surface of the moon.

‘Everything we do is related to time.’

Recurring features include scalloped edges, on marble and wood, the juxtaposition of volumes and combinations of materials. Up to 15 artisans worked on each piece in the exhibition, which was developed across 21 workshops scattered around Treviso, northern Italy. Each element of the design was worked on by a specialist to achieve the best results. The hinges holding the glass part of the Monocle series’ ‘M030’ cabinet, for example, were made by a jewellery workshop. Production of the collections was overseen by Nilufar and managed by Raffoul and Moussallem’s long-term fabricator, Italian company Atelier F.

While quick to acknowledge Atelier F’s support over the years, the designers add that clients have also been pivotal to their development. ‘Clients are the people who bring you somewhere. They are part of the evolution, they are our inspiration,’ says Raffoul, noting how more over-the-top requests pushed the pair to experiment early on in their careers, and their fabricator, in turn, to create more complex pieces. ‘We bounce ideas off each other, as though we’re playing a game of ping-pong. They have learned a lot with us and we have learned a lot from them,’ says Moussallem.

The duo’s recent projects include a collaboration with Belgian fashion designer Carine Gilson on her Brussels boutique, and an interiors concept for Beirut restaurant Kaléo (W*219). A few years ago, they designed the Parisian apartment of Cherine Magrebi, founder of House of Today, an organisation that promotes Lebanese designers and their work. For both Raffoul and Moussallem, clients and collaborators become family the longer they work together.

It is a system they believe has made their studio stronger, and they would happily continue creating together for the rest of their lives. On their current trajectory, there’s no reason they won’t. ‘What make us work well together is honesty, and a common dream.’

As originally featured in the October 2018 issue of Wallpaper* (W*235)

INFORMATION

Supernova is on view until 13 April at Carpenters Workshop Gallery New York. For more information, visit the David/Nicolas website

ADDRESS

693 Fifth Avenue
New York
10022

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Quite the renaissance man, there seems no end to Karl Lagerfeld’s creative talents. Recent weeks have seen the fashion powerhouse  commended for his collaboration with Puma, as well as a wave of praise for his recent Chanel S/S 2019 collection which premiered on a catwalk beach during Paris Fashion Week.

Look back further and the list of achievements of this Wallpaper* guest editor diverges further from fashion; it is as heterogeneous as it is surprising. Illustrator, photographer, reality TV show star and film director, Lagerfeld has also put his name to a teddy bear in his likeness and the design of a series of residences.

Most recently, he has taken to sculpture. The solo show ‘Architectures’ at the Carpenters Workshop Gallery in the Marais presents a series of marble sculptures by Lagerfeld, created in collaboration with the architect Aline Asmar d’Amman. The pair most recently worked on the renovation of Paris’ Hôtel Crillon, where Lagerfeld installed a two-tonne bath cut from a single block of Carrara marble; this show is the continuation of the work that began there.

In keeping with the gallery’s remit, these are not so much sculptures as design pieces. One might call them functional sculpture, but for this categorisation I refer you to Franz West’s current exhibition at the Centre Pompidou instead. Despite the coolness of the milky marble, and the decidedly impractical dimensions, there is a decadent domesticity to the works which take the form of pier tables, lamps, fountains, and mirrors.

Heavily influenced by Antiquity — an epoch which, according to Lagerfeld, knew no such thing as bad taste — each piece is created in both black Nero Marquina marble and Arabescato Fantastico in editions of eight, the latter of which has not been quarried for over 30 years. Hovering between the ancient and the contemporary, it is intriguing to see the sculptural design work of a man whose influence over all aesthetic spheres has been so ubiquitous for so many years.

INFORMATION

Karl Lagerfeld’s ‘Architectures’ is on until 22 December. For more information visit the Carpenters Workshop Gallery website.

In 1989, an earthquake destroyed San Francisco’s St. Joseph’s church, an architectural jewel built in 1913 that had subsequently been designated the city's Landmark #120. The massive neo-romanesque structure was abandoned through the 1990s and 2000s until design impresario Ken Fulk rechristened it as the Saint Joseph’s Arts Society this fall after a multiyear restoration. True to the site’s impressive origins, the building has found its newest tenant in Carpenters Workshop Gallery, the contemporary design gallery, which opens today with an inaugural group show.

While San Francisco’s identity is inextricably linked with technology and forward motion, the recent addition to the art landscape nods at the city’s historic cultural identity with its classical space, one full of up-to-the-moment design. 

Founders Julien Lombrail and Loïc Le Gaillard, who celebrated Carpenters Workshop Gallery’s original London location’s 10th anniversary last year, have also recently expanded the gallery to Paris and New York. They chose their first West-Coast location to exist within Saint Joseph’s, using a 9,000 square feet of the building’s mezzanine.

Nearly 100 years after the construction of the church during what was the city’s turn-of-the-century heyday, San Francisco is inarguably experiencing a similar cultural peak that progressively attracts tastemakers. While the arts club, recently opened, will be strictly for subscribers, design enthusiasts will be able to visit Carpenters Workshop Gallery along with other art and design spaces such as Assouline book corner, Mr. Fulk’s Flower Factory and the only US outpost French apothecary, Buly 1803. The private club will be open to the public for arts-related events.

The Carpenters Workshop Gallery outpost will run under the leadership of director Ashlee Harrison along with Alison Harrington, and will offer a rotating schedule of exhibitions. Programming will include biannual solo exhibitions from the gallery’s growing stable of artists, which include the likes of Rick Owens and Maarten Baas. The opening exhibition features designers such as Studio Job, Atelier Van Lieshout, Mathieu Lehanneur, Vincenzo de Cotiis and Nacho Carbonell, who offers an immersive light sculpture installation. It’s a renovation that both looks forward and backward at once.

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the website

Joep van Lieshout has been treading the blurry line between art and design since the early 80s. His studio, Atelier Van Lieshout, which he founded in 1995, has created everything from sexually suggestive sculptures to utilitarian office chairs.

Unsurprisingly, his work, sometimes shocking in its frankness, often attracts attention. Most recently he found himself at the centre of a media storm when plans to display his fibreglass sculpture resembling a man penetrating an animal were scrapped by the Louvre at the last minute.

‘It was totally innocent,’ says a baffled Van Lieshout, as he surveys a lamp version of the controversial ‘Domestikator sculpture’. ‘I couldn’t understand the fuss at all, but,’ he adds, ‘I’ve never had so much publicity in my whole life.’

‘Flatpack’ concrete chair, 2016

While the much larger fibreglass sculpture ended up on show at Paris’ Centre Pompidou, the lamp version currently sits in the Carpenters Workshop Gallery in London at his ‘Lust for Life’ show, which opened today.

Here, the Rotterdam-based sculptor’s ponderings on the human condition manifest themselves in lamps and furniture made from cast bronze, concrete and contorted steel.

While the ‘Domestikator’ lamp, he says, is a questioning of what ethical taboos will remain when science and technology can surpass the limits of biology, a series of anthropomorphic cast bronze lamp sculptures explore the inevitable process of aging – an old man with a cane is bent double under one cast bronze diffuser, while a youthful couple in an elegant embrace dance beneath another.

In among the lamps is a brutalist flat pack chair made from blocks of heavy concrete bolted to a steel structure. Nearby a similarly monolithic chair with plywood sides is decorated with tribal carvings.

Most recently, Van Lieshout has been enjoying a more ‘conceptual phase’ in his studio, where he has been exploding gas canisters, contorting steel with hydraulics and dropping anvils into white goods. The result is a series of heavy, butchered metal sculptures and lamps.

The series, he says, is particularly inspired by the early 20th-century Italian Futurists, who were passionate nationalists, anarchists and great admirers of new technologies and violence.

‘In a way our society is in a similar situation now with a lot of technological changes, but also with the incredible popularity of fascism and populism’ explains Van Lieshout. ‘This piece is a statement about design in that you can use not shape or aesthetics or function as a departure point for making, but instead you use the process itself or destruction.’

Next up on his agenda is a ‘24 hours of destruction’ clock – ‘Every minute there will be a new form of destruction,’ he says, ‘hammering, pulling, pushing.’

Despite this fascination for friction, Van Lieshout has a surprisingly positive outlook, concluding, ‘Myself? I am a brutalist optimist.’

INFORMATION

’Lust For Life’ is on view until 11 May. For more information, visit the Carpenters Workshop Gallery website

ADDRESS

Carpenters Workshop Gallery
4 Albemarle Street
London
W1S 4GA

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Vincent Dubourg and Julien Lombrail met at a party when they were teenagers in Villennes-sur-Seine, but it was not till years later they turned their friendship into a professional relationship.

When Lombrail opened London’s Carpenters Workshop Gallery with co-founder Loïc Le Gaillard in 2006, he asked a then-29-year-old Dubourg to show his ‘Metal’ exhibition, making him the youngest artist to show at the gallery.

After years of collaboration, the two have joined forces once again for ‘Vortex,’ Dubourg’s latest exhibition on display at Carpenters Workshop Gallery’s New York location.

The idea behind ‘Vortex’ [was] to take society, engulf it in a vortex and take it to a new planet and other ways of living,’ Dubourg said. ‘It is about the deconstruction of society, systems and forms.’

Drawing inspiration from nature, Dubourg deconstructs conventional silhouettes and manipulates materials like aluminum to create pieces that evoke composed chaos — teetering between avant-garde and functional.

‘The most important [thing] for me is to create a universe,’ he explains further. ‘I want to build a universe that I can feel and build from the carcass such as a car, to a create something that has a function as an object and can also be comfortable.’

The 3,250 sq ft space features seven aluminum works, which chronicle Dubourg’s distinct eye throughout his 15-plus year career. Old meets new, as four pieces from 2017 — including his ‘Buffet Grand Vortex’ — sit next to two buffets and a shelf from 2009, 2014 and 2010, respectively

‘I wanted to show my evolution and growth,’ he continues. ‘My new collection is animated by a discreet movement, delicate pigmentation, and a breath of life.’

Thanks to Dubourg’s new eponymous monograph, you can bring a slice of the French artist home with you. Copies are sold at the New York gallery, so be sure to pick up a copy before you leave.

INFORMATION

’Vincent Dubourg: Vortex’ is on view until 23 December. For more information, visit the Carpenters Workshop Gallery website

ADDRESS

Carpenters Workshop Gallery
693 Fifth Avenue
New York
10022

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The autumn fair season kicked off in Paris with Maison et Objet and Paris Design Week, welcoming the European design community back from its summer holidays. It was a well-padded schedule, both at the Parc d'Exposition and around town, where galleries had mounted fresh shows; and at the Cité de la Mode, buzzing with emerging talents showing at the Now! Le Off space.

In the exhibition halls, the ‘Objet’ component of the show was strong. In particular, desktop paraphernalia was imagined in many different ways, with exhibitors from Taiwan and China (Yen Objects, TA&D, Ey Products and Kimu, for example) dominating the offering. Established companies such as Hartô and Pulpo bolstered their collections of furniture with small-scale products – lamps, hooks and trays at Hartô, and glassware and carafes at Pulpo – while Minimalux, specialists in perfectly pared-back small-scale accessories, showcased a host of new items, created since recent investment reinforced their hand.

Tinted glassware seemed popular in launches at Pulpo, Tom Dixon and Ichendorf, while new ceramic offerings seemed to favour mid-century colours and forms – as seen at Rig-Tig, Namhee Kim, Zens and Nicola Tassie, who launched her ceramic lamps at Margaret Howell in town.

The cooking section was on fire, with multiple launches from Merci, who teamed up with Serax to produce tabletop ceramics ideal for bringing a touch of refinement to desk lunches; with Paola Navone on a collection designed for cooking pasta; and with Emile Henry on a set of stoneware cooking pots. While many companies were prosaically exercised in their quests for the perfect take-out lunch and drink containers (see Black+Blum, Eva Solo and Acera), others focused on gilding their table offerings. Almost literally in the case of Alessi, who produced a collection of their iconic bowls, dishes and trays in a special punched brass finish, using an ancient goldsmithing technique called Etruscan granulation. The effect is to transform pieces we know well, giving them deserved new life.

The standout offering at the fair was that of Giobagnara and sister brand Rabitti 1969, which, with Stéphane Parmentier newly at the creative helm, exhibited a whole new collection of leather furniture and accessories, from consoles to poufs, trays of all sizes and a memory card game.

There was plenty to see around town. At Now! Le Off it was an exhibition by Atelier Synapse – a newly merged group of craftsmen, comprising members of design studios Ateliers Seewhy and 13douze – that caught our eye. Sponsored by Laverdure, the collection used epoxy resin as a key material. More fresh talent from around the world was on show at Galerie VIA. Stand-outs included an innovative dimming wall light, dubbed ‘Binomios’, by Mexican design group Comité de Proyectos; and an essential oil distillery by Tiffany Lei.

Staple design/art galleries like Tools Galerie, Gallery Bensimon, Pouenat and Carpenters Workshop were all ready with arresting new collections, with charred wooden pieces at Bensimon courtesy of Roberto Sironi; spraying and stencilling by Katia Jacquet at Tools; and original sculptural pieces by Sybille de Margerie at Pouenat, and ‘Furnification’ by Atelier Van Lieshout at Carpenters.

INFORMATION
For more information, visit the Maison et Objet website

French designer Mathieu Lehanneur has been busy in New York recently, unveiling a new collection at Carpenters Workshop Gallery within days of overseeing the big reveal of his interiors for Maison Kitsuné’s flagship in Soho. But the two projects only overlapped at this final stretch: his new series, ‘Ocean Memories’, has been in the works for years, comprising weighty black marble (100-500kg of the stuff) and polished bronze monoliths that resemble slices of ocean.

A continuation of his ‘Liquid Marble’ work, which he debuted at Salone del Mobile in 2013, the tables, stools and bench are a result of 3D technology that translates ocean currents into replicable forms. Then, each piece is cut by a machine to precisely capture what Lehanneur calls ‘the equation of liquid’ into the stone. Lastly, the marble is hand-polished to perfectly preserve every ripple and wave. The effect of marble visually rendered into liquid is surreal, as if someone took a core sample of the ocean and froze it.

‘It’s the paradox of applying the liquid to something that is supposed to be the perfect opposite of liquid – in this case, marble,’ Lehanneur says. ‘Plus, I like to create pieces where it is not easy to know what time they come from. If you use plastic, acrylic, resin, then you know it is from the 1970s, 80s, 90s. Marble is a timeless material and the ocean is timeless as well.’ However, the designer does not obsess over a particular method or material. ‘My goal is not to make a tribute to marble or to technology,’ he explains. ‘I don’t care about marble. I don’t care about technology. I only care about the effect, the experience. I want to evoke the miracle and the fragility of being alive.’ 

As for the boutique, which moved to Soho after five years at its NoMad location, Lehanneur focused on the links that Maison Kitsuné makes between cultures, fashion and music to inform the new space’s design. A curving vine-like rail meanders through the store’s textured concrete interior, like ‘a magic pencil, drawing its own line within the space’, Lehanneur says. Accented with marble, mirror and bi-chromated steel elements, the elegant boutique is another iteration of Lehanneur‘s ability to bring organic and mineral elements together in sophisticated harmony.

INFORMATION

‘Ocean Memories’ is on view until 27 October. For more information, visit Carpenters Workshop Gallery’s website and the Maison Kitsuné website

ADDRESS

Carpenters Workshop Gallery
693 Fifth Avenue
New York

Maison Kitsuné
248 Lafayette Street
New York

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While it may seem simple, Robert Stadler’s ‘Anywhere’ lighting series is quite the game-changer. ‘It’s an emancipation from the confines of the domestic space,’ Stadler says. ‘It frees the lamp from its static position.’

These are big claims for the slim carbon fibre levers that balance a paper-lantern Akari fixture on one end and a large punctuated orb on the other (a handle of sorts to move the light). But it’s true — the fixture no longer is affixed to a singular spot, nor is the light diffused onto one section of a space.

Now, Stadler’s longtime collaborator, Carpenters Workshop Gallery (CWG) is showing the range of this collection in its New York space. The show's title – ‘Weight Class’ – is a reference to the boxing term that denotes spectrum of size that too can applied to the offerings in Stadler’s self-curated show, which includes shelves, consoles and tables. The title also metaphorically connotes balance, and looking at ‘Anywhere #2’, especially with an oversized Akari 33N shade, the eye quickly sees the tension of equilibrium at work.

‘I was amazed by such a talent, brightness and power. It’s exactly what we love which is functional sculpture,’ recalls Julien Lombrail, who founded CWG alongside Loïc Le Gaillard; both have been working Stadler since 2008. It’s the guys behind the pioneering ‘functional sculpture’ gallery that called Stadler after seeing his work because, ‘whether what Robert does is art, design, collectible design or functional sculpture, it’s the most sophisticated expression because it is difficult.’

‘He’s a punk dandy!’, exclaims Lombrail. ‘There’s a reason for everything in Robert’s work; it might look simple but it’s like highly sophisticated without being pretentious.’ Along with the Noguchi Museum and Collective Design Fair, CWG has triangulated efforts to make this a ‘moment’ for Stadler.

The Noguchi Museum and CWG will be unveiling Secret Garden, an immersive installation of Stadler’s at Collective. As Lombrail says, ‘You have to fit the art box, have to be creative, thoughtful, meaningful, part of the history and not repeat something; but at the same time is the functional side. You have to make it work. That’s a big challenge.’

For the upcoming week where the world’s sophisticated art set comes to town, the time is ripe to expand common knowledge about Stadler. ‘We want to give Robert the attention so this way collectors can really get it,’ explains Lombrail. ‘As soon as you get what his work is about, you’re in love. But it’s not something that’s immediate, because it’s subtle.’

INFORMATION

‘Weight Class’ is on view until 24 June. For more information, visit the Carpenters Workshop Gallery website

ADDRESS

Carpenters Workshop Gallery
693 5th Avenue
New York NY 10022

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Given that this year marks the 21st edition of PAD Paris, certain constants are inevitable; whether the exhibitors that reliably return such as Jacques Lacoste, Jousse Entreprise, Carpenters Workshop Gallery and Galerie Kreo, or the dimmed and darkened backdrop that gives the fair a theatrical ambiance. Annual visitors and clients will likely agree: there is always a particular thrill in knowing that such meticulously staged mise-en-scenes within a tent in the Tuileries exist for such a fleeting few days.

But the guarantee of discovering something unique or rare, or else finding familiar objets d’art grouped with originality, is what truly makes PAD Paris such a destination fair. An advance walkthrough of this latest showcase yielded too many highlights to include here. So at the risk of excluding quite a bit, what follows is simply an attempt to single out various points of interest or newness, plus a few random observations.

For starters, there is a new President of the Jury PAD Paris Prize, Marie-Laure Jousset, honorary curator of the Centre Pompidou's design department. It is likely no coincidence that her arrival coincides with an increase in female gallerists, who now represent 30 per cent of the exhibitors (it is, admittedly, still a low percentage). In addition, the fair’s cafe design was overseen by Sarah Lavoine, who created a lush green setting enlivened with her signature pattern mixing. In some instances, women who have participated in the past are playing up their female artists this year, as is the case with Antonine Catzéflis. Her booth comes alive with the diverse creations of contemporary ceramicists Clémentine de Chabaneix (her innocent animal figures bear the faintest trace of her grandparents, Claude and Francois-Xavier Lalanne), Agathe Brahami Ferron and Elisabeth Lincot, whose 110 unique bird heads make for a lively wall installation and conversation piece. Catzéflis is also presenting a remarkable piece from Benjamin Pagnart which looks as though it materialised from a Hieronymous Bosch painting, with its many breast-shaped drawers and bowed legs, all in manipulated wood. The gallerist says she imagines it being acquired by a perfumer for storing small samples – although frankly, its novelty has far wider appeal.

On the subject of ceramics, Karen Swami’s series in a deep shade of lapis blue ringed in lustrous gold deserves a look, if only to appreciate how she has parlayed traditional techniques into vessels that bridge time. But Maria Wettergren’s eye for Scandinavian graphic minimalism is no less impactful. Among MW Galerie’s key pieces this year are a striking panel of iron thread-like pressed coral fibres by Gjertrud Hals; Ilkka Suppanen’s subtle white tableau rendered whimsical thanks to scattered dewdrops in Murano glass; and a high-gloss cubist stack of boxes in peony pink from Ditte Hammerstrøm in her booth. Was she thinking differently about her selection this year? 'I think everything is faithful to the spirit of the gallery,' she maintains. ‘These are all poetic works inspired by nature.’

The same could be said of the light fixtures Christopher Boots created exclusively for Armel Soyer (yet another female gallerist). Rock crystals in a dégradé of natural earth tones are illuminated by LEDs within hooped metal frames so that the effect is simultaneously raw and refined.

Indeed, while PAD Paris has never taken a thematic approach, the inclination among exhibitors towards natural subject matter feels undeniable this year. It’s certainly noticeable in Damien Gernay’s manipulation of leather as wave-like patterning for his 'Mer Noire (Black Sea)' table in the Gosserez space, and also in Alexandre Biaggi’s choice of elegant coral sconces from Janine Janet, an artisan who often did window installations for Cristóbal Balenciaga. While Biaggi is among many contemporary decorative arts specialists at the fair, this year marks the 20th anniversary of his gallery and so he returned after a hiatus. ‘It’s such a creative space where antiques and contemporary works come together in an unparalleled setting,’ he says. ‘There are so many opportunities to discover.’

And if not to buy, then to learn; Lacoste’s tribute to the influence of Hector Guimard – the architect famous for the iconic swirling Paris Métro ornamentation among other Art Nouveau marvels – brings together rare, highly stylised furniture from the turn-of-the-century, recreating the whimsy with freshness and flourish. For an extreme counterpoint, see Dominic Harris’ arrangement of small screens at Privéekollektie, each featuring a different species of flower in a state of augmented reality; picture a deconstructed, animated still life (an oxymoron, to be sure) and you get a rough idea.

Also worth singling out: Studio MVW’s 'JinShi' console with its decorative pink jade discs that are lit from within to service the adjacent mirror. You’d be hard-pressed to find a chic-er piece for a boudoir. Then there’s the rare Lalanne rhinoceros screen at Y & V Gastou, which will likely find a home early into the fair’s five-day run.

And as for this year’s winners, determined by a jury that included Vincent Darré, Joseph Dirand, Jacques Grange, India Mahdavi and Philippe Starck? Sleeves, the luminescent, multi-hued glass scrolls by Laura de Santillana at Galerie Clara Scremini shared the prize for best contemporary design with 'La Collection', a series of forward leaning decorative forms from RoWin’ Atelier at Galerie Alexandre Guillemain.

But for some, Pierre Gonalons’ re-imagining of Rudolf Nureyev’s Parisian apartment for the designated Studio Pad space might make the most indelible impression. Here, the young designer’s austerely attractive marble designs punctuate Pierre Frey’s rhythmic oversized vegetal textiles. Not just an update of the dancer’s bold taste, the inspired arrangement crystallises the fair’s mission to surprise time and time again. 

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the PAD Paris website

The late American furniture designer Vladimir Kagan profoundly influenced contemporary design during his nearly 70-year-long career with his organic works, which feature in museums across the world (including the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Vitra Design Museum in Germany). Still, the design icon continues to inspire as the Carpenters Workshop Gallery in New York unveils Kagan’s final collection, ‘Annecy', which includes a sofa, console and low table.

Much of the furniture was designed in Kagan’s studio in Clifton, New Jersey, where he was actively working before he passed away at the age of 88 earlier this year. ‘We wanted to do the first edition of the sofa out of wood, as to maintain some sort of lineage with his classic designs from the 1950s and 1960s,’ says Vladimir Kagan Design Group's director of design and production Chris Eitel, who worked with Kagan closely on the collection. For the console and low table, Kagan and Eitel applied the process of model boat building (they took a class together in Nantucket) to create full-scale foam models, which the gallery cast in bronze and aluminium in France.

Inspired by bridge engineering as well as nature, the furniture is classic Kagan in its sensuous lines and minimal forms, but with a futuristic flourish – the designer was also ‘playing around’ with 3D printing at the time. ‘We started working with Kagan about two years ago,’ says Cédric Morisset, associate director of Carpenters Workshop Gallery. ‘It was truly an honor to work with someone who has been in the vanguard of new design and new technologies since the 1950s and 60s.’

Eitel adds: ‘I feel the Annecy collection is, in a way, Vladimir coming full circle in his career. Vladimir was first and foremost a fine artist and sculptor who happened upon designing furniture by working in his father’s cabinet shop. We really tried to focus on the forms of the pieces: they needed to be sculpture first and utilitarian second.’

Annecy is named for Kagan’s second-youngest granddaughter – he often named his designs after family members – which not only continues a touching tradition, but is an apt metaphor for the enduring legacy of Kagan’s work.

INFORMATION

‘Annecy: A Tribute Exhibition’ is on view until 29 October. For more information, visit the Carpenters Workshop Gallery website

ADDRESS

693 Fifth Avenue
New York
NY 10022

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The work of sculptural furniture designer Ingrid Donat needs to be seen – and touched – to be truly understood. Lucky for us then that her latest bronze pieces have arrived at London’s Carpenters Workshop Gallery, in a show titled ’Origins’.

Six new sculptural pieces – including two commodes, a console table, benches and lighting fixtures – sit sincerely within the dark, sombre space, itself clad in wooden panels, making them look somehow scorched from afar, yet exquisitely refined up-close. It’s a masculine space overall, you could say, not dissimilar to one you might find in one of Peter Marino’s moody interiors – no surprise that she is a préféré of his. Upon closer inspection, the female touch becomes apparent: the warm patina of the deep burgundy table is an ode to a velvet sofa her grandfather commissioned for his house when she was young; or the lace-like charm of some designs and the faultless attention to detail.

’I am very lucky to work with the people that I do,’ she says coolly, speaking of her studio within the Carpenters Workshop in Roissy, the former varnish factory transformed by the gallery into a foundry to preserve and celebrate the Arts Décoratifs. Here she has endless access to the finest artisans – engravers, gilders, upholsterers, prototypists, the works. ’Everything is possible,’ she explains.

Such possibility breeds innovation, which has led Donat to explore new materials and methods. For example, her ’Banc Tribal’ stools are cast in iconic bronze, but with the clever addition of leather patches where you would normally sit. Completely invisible to the eye, they meld into the elaborate etchings and can only be appreciated through touch, thus succeeding in making sitting on a bronze stool an altogether warmer experience.  

’For me furniture has to be discrete above all, and elegant [as well as functional]. When you step into a room you don’t want it to "flash" the eye and draw attention [away from art],’ she says as she points to a Basquiat painting and various African masks on display. That is not to say that furniture should melt into the background; it was Donat’s frustration in finding unique furnishings – and a bit of encouragement from her good friends Diego and Alberto Giacometti – that first brought her to creating her own furniture. Since then, tribal and art deco influences have remained integral to her work; Pierre Legrain and Armand Albert Rateau are constant sources of inspiration.

To see new work from the Parisian sculptor (it has been four years since her last solo show) is a thrilling proposition, but the knowledge that there is more to come – in a second, larger retrospective in New York – makes it all the sweeter. With the arrival of a first monograph dedicated solely to her work as well, 2016 is set to be a great year for Donat.

INFORMATION

’Origins’ is on view until 22 July. For more information visit the Carpenters Workshop Gallery’s website

ADDRESS 

Carpenters Workshop Gallery
3 Albemarle Street
London, W1S 4HE

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On the heels of its recent opening in New York, Carpenters Workshop has launched its first solo show, which turns the spotlight on the Dutch designer Maarten Baas. For this new, exclusive collection, called ‘Carapace’, Baas imagined furniture made with shell-like armour, inspired by the carapace (the protective shells of animals, like beetles and turtles) found in nature. 

He made the surfaces of each piece as a kind of metal quilt, piecing together a patchwork of small, patinated bronze and steel panels. The dot-welding process he used to join the pieces together leaves a pattern of welded stitches, animating the surface of these objects. The six-piece collection consists of two armchairs, three different types of cabinets, and a desk. Each component of the collection will run as a limited series of eight, plus the artist’s proof. For the insides of the cabinets and desk, Baas used European walnut, with meticulously crafted carpentry.

For the ever-pensive Baas, there is an element of autobiography in the collection. ‘The process reflects my own state,’ he says, describing the reclusiveness of his studio space, tucked away in the Dutch countryside. ‘I was hidden from the outside world while I made this collection.’

Even though it may be introspective, it’s ultimately optimistic. ‘It hides something under which something else can grow,’ Baas reflects. ‘It feels very protective.’ As a case-in-point, he draws attention to a secret drawer hidden within the desk, accessed with a discreet turn of a latch.

On the upper floor, the gallery maintains a group show, which happens to include several pieces by Baas from other collections, including the new ‘Self Portrait Clock’ and a piano from his seminal ‘Where There’s Smoke’ collection.

‘Carapace’, on view through 30 April, has been long in the making, with Carpenters giving the designer the time to fully develop this technique. ‘It’s nice to put so much effort into each piece,’ says Baas. ‘We made no concessions.’

INFORMATION

‘Carapace’ is now on view through 30 April, by appointment only. For more details, please visit the website

Photography: Guilherme Lessa, courtesy of Carpenters Workshop Gallery

ADDRESS

Carpenters Workshop Gallery
693 Fifth Avenue
New York, New York 

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We’re an optimistic, forward-thinking bunch here at Wallpaper, so we don’t like to sound negative – but as we strode through the eight vast and alternately over-and under-heated halls of Maison et Objet last weekend, all too many brands we asked ‘What’s new this season?’ looked slightly embarrassed, shifted from foot to foot and finally responded with an apologetic, ‘Er, not very much, actually.’

Maybe we’ve been to too many fairs – or maybe we’re getting a little jaded – but much of this January’s M&O felt like rather an interim affair. Some nice designs, undoubtedly, but – for Wallpaper* at least – nothing that stopped us dead in our tracks. What we did see, though, were some beautiful things from single makers and smaller outfits, as well as some enticing new editions (and re-editions) from some of the bigger brands.

With a show so vast and so varied it’s always hard to discern trends, but it was intriguing to see some of our own hunches borne out. We seem to have reached Peak Brass, for example – after a couple of years of having brass everywhere, it was far less in evidence this time; copper, meanwhile, was almost nowhere to be seen. As for marble, the other big material story of the last few years, white seems to be giving way to various other colours (clearly it’s going to be around for some time yet).

Among the bigger brands, Normann Copenhagen showed its classic ‘Form’ armchairs, covered for the first time with a range of attractive fabrics in various denim shades. There were bright new colourways, too, for the ‘Block’ trolley and ‘Pocket’ wall organisers, as well as a new modular sofa designed by Hans Hornemann. Called ‘Rope’, it comes in 12 different modules and is padded not with foam but with the kind of pocket springs normally found in beds for extra comfort.

Ligne Roset maintained the modular mood with the multicoloured ‘Slice’ armchair, designed by Pierre Charpin in the 1980s but not produced until now, and also showed new versions of Philippe Nigro’s popular ‘Cosse’ sofa.

Over at Gubi, we were dazzled by a re-edition of Louis Weisdorf’s 1972 ‘Multi-Lite’ pendant lamp in seven different materials and colourways. Their two opposing quarter-spherical shades can be rotated individually, offering multiple combinations where the light can be directed upwards, downwards or in various other combinations.

Also lighting the way forward were Hisle’s ‘La Luxciole’ French-made, cordless aluminium table lamps, which despite having powerful LED bulbs cast a warm, attractive light. Kalmar, meanwhile, showed its classic ‘Billy T’ lamp ‘re-edited’ (in its words) by Ilse Crawford. We also liked the oval wall lamp from CTO Lighting, by Turkish design studio Autobahn; while Moser’s new hand-cut glass crystal ‘Carrara 3336’ lamp, designed by Jabůrek Lukáš, came in both pendant and table versions.

Moser also showed some striking glass trays, their edges supported by a pyramid, a cube, a tube and a sphere, all in solid coloured glass. Other good glassware was to be seen in the 'Talents à la Carte' exhibition, which focused on six young Scandinavian designers, including Katriina Nuutinen, whose ‘Lyyli’ containers combine two very Finnish materials: mouth-blown clear and coloured glass with birchwood lids and glass handles. Czech designer Anna Torfs' sculptural vases demonstrated that the traditional Bohemian glass traditions are alive and well.

It was good to see the Misoka•ISM toothbrush, a Design Awards 2016 winner, showing at Maison et Objet, with a spectacular ‘waterfall’ display made up of hundreds of brushes, which apparently took 10 people 10 days to make.

As always, there were appealing finds from smaller brands and up-and-coming designers. Shibui’s onion-shaped wooden mortars and pestles made a welcome addition to their thoughtfully designed accessories for the kitchen, while French studio Coming B’s clever side tables with integral swivelling trays suggested that they’re definitely ones to watch. Young Copenhagen-based Central St Martins graduate Troels Flensted makes alluring tables and vessels whose swirling patterns are created by mixing powdered pigments into a composite material.

Though as always there was more at Maison than anyone could hope to see, the galleries and studios in Paris itself had some particularly fine shows this January. Among the stalwarts, Carpenters Workshop Gallery offered lovely new colourways in Wonmin Park’s ‘Haze’ collection, as well as a group of very characterful lamps-cum-sculptures by Mathieu Lehanneur. Equally intriguing were Marco Guazzini’s stained-marble centrepieces at Galerie S Bensimon – which just goes to show that even a ubiquitous material can be reinvented in the hands of a thoughtful designer.

INFORMATION

Maison et Objet ran from 22–26 January 2016. For more information, visit Maison et Objet's website

If Britain is going potty for pottery this year, it’s not hard to see why – some fantastic new contemporary talents are emerging, and the collectors market is also having a happy upswing. Adding fuel to the kiln has been the new and considerable Centre of Ceramic Art at the York Art Gallery, the best year yet for the British Ceramics Biennale in Stoke on Trent, and myriad artists – from Edmund de Waal to Ai Wei Wei to Barnaby Barford – all reinterpreting the medium variously and vicariously, too.

The latest show not to be missed? The bold and the beautiful ceramics of Los Angeles-based German artist, Roger Herman, currently on show at the Carpenters Workshop Gallery in London.

Those already familiar with Roger Herman’s work will likely associate him more with the dominant themes of mortality and porn than pots. This exhibition, however, is dedicated to ceramic works that experiment with colour, a long-term and central aspect of his oevre to date too.

Herman himself has said that the subject of his work is always paint. Born and educated in Germany before moving to LA in 1977, he started his career as an artist working on large canvases with a distinctive and colourful signature. Having initially established a name for himself as the West Coast king of the 80s neo-expressionist movement, it was as he made the shift from painting to using clay that his fascination with colours (and how they would change during the glazing process) first took hold.

At the end of the last millennium, he began to take on a new artistic direction. Herman left his gallery and turned to the tuition of one of his graduate students at UCLA (where he became a professor in the late 1980s), and began mastering this new craft. Some 500 bowls were created and cast in the process of perfecting his style.

The British might be a little behind the West Coast and LA, where ceramics have long been on the rise and where Herman is a pioneer of sorts. But in this corner of Mayfair at least, this is an artform that is starting to show its true colours.

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Carpenters Workshop Gallery website

ADDRESS

Carpenters Workshop Gallery
3 Albemarle Street
London W1S 4HE

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It’s hard to believe that it’s been over a decade since Loic Le Gaillard and Julien Lombrail opened Carpenters Workshop in London. In those years, the Frenchmen have undoubtedly secured their place (and the place of design-art) in the art world, having championed the artistically functional creations of Joanna Grawunder, Maarten Baas and Nacho Carbonell, just to name some.

This week, the duo is poised to reach new heights with the opening of a New York gallery space, literally. The American outpost is perched on the 19 and 20 floors of the ex-Takashimaya building situated on Fifth Avenue, which was originally designed by Philip Johnson and John Burgee. Following the move in of Valentino last year, the building also features David Chipperfield-designed interiors on its first three floors.

Way up above that, the Carpenters Workshop space is comparatively raw and unvarnished, though the double height windows, private elevator and array of collectible design certainly commands its own presence.

‘The American market is very savvy to the decorative arts and design, generally speaking. We’ve been doing a lot of our business with American clients already. Almost 40 per cent of our business is done in the States on a reactive basis. We thought it would make sense for us to come and start knocking on people’s door,’ says Lombrail.

‘We want to convey not only the aesthetic of the gallery but also explain to people how you can live with these pieces,’ he continues. ‘We are very fortunate to have this amazing space on Fifth Avenue. The 19th floor stays mostly as a white box where we will stage some rigorous exhibitions, sometimes showing just one artist at a time to explain the work, and on the 20th floor, we’re going to do something more domestic, where we almost transform the 20th floor as an apartment, which I’d like to believe would become my perfect bachelor’s pad.’

For its opening, the gallery has installed an assortment of its greatest hits; works from recognizable names such as Baas, Carbonell, Rick Owens and Studio Job are mixed in with Wonmin Park’s ‘Haze’ stools, Random International’s interactive wall sculptures and Studio Drift’s swirling ‘Flylight’ chandelier - many of which have on been created specially for the occasion. And since there’s nothing quite like seeing and experiencing the scale and tactility of these thought-provoking pieces in the flesh, we’re predicting that the gallery won’t stay a quiet house for long.

INFORMATION

Website

By appointment only

Photography: Courtesy of Carpenters Workshop

ADDRESS

Carpenters Workshop Gallery
693 Fifth Avenue
19th Floor
New York

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In the past few years, the creative conversation between Paris and London has been flourishing, and design galleries have become the central topic. With the unveiling of Parisian Galerie Kreo's London outpost last year and the UK-based Carpenters Workshop Gallery adding a Parisian space a few years earlier, there seems to be a healthy exchange of talent and business going on across the Channel. Modern art and design outpost Galerie Dutko opened its London doors earlier this month – and now it's been joined by Patrick Seguin’s Mayfair opening, perhaps the most anticipated new gallery on the scene.

Since 1989, Seguin has been a pioneer at bringing the works of Jean Prouvé, Charlotte Perriand, Le Corbusier and Jean Royère to a wider public, presenting and preserving an important design and architecture movement for over two decades. Its visionary design stance now comes to London, in a space designed by Leonardo Pelleriti, a London-based Italian architect who cut his teeth at Roger Stirk Harbour + Partners before co-founding Wimshurst Pelleriti earlier this year.

For his new gallery’s debut, Seguin presented two projects that give a significant introduction to his work, united under the 'Petites Machines D'Architecture' (or, 'Small Machines of Architecture') banner. Fresh from Design Miami/Basel, the '6x6 Demountable House' by Jean Prouvé is presented here through a series of sketches, photographs, models and a video illustrating its installation. Nearby, the French designer’s 'Temporary School of Villejuif' from 1956 is shown as part of the structure, as well as in a wealth of documents from the time. Smaller objects, such as a table used in the cafeteria and iconic Prouvé chairs, are also part of the display.

The presentation of both projects is a fitting way of introducing Seguin’s working methods to a London audience; his encyclopedic presentation of the background and painstaking documentation of their structural details form an important testament to a generation of designers and their contemporary legacy. Seguin calls this a ‘non-miss opportunity': ‘London has an extremely dynamic art scene with a large collector base,’ he says, ‘the British art market represents by itself 75 per cent of the European market.’ In its initial development stages, the London space will serve as a platform to display the development of his work on Prouvé’s architecture. ‘I am looking forward to reinforcing the bi-cultural nature of our gallery,’ he concludes, ‘and embracing the British gallery scene.’

ADDRESS

Galerie Patrick Seguin
45–47 Brook Street
Mayfair
London, W1K 4HN

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PAD, the unofficial sister event to Frieze Art Fair, opened this week for its annual gallery gathering in London's Berkeley Square. This year, the Mayfair location factored in more high design than its antique-heavy preceding years, celebrating an exquisite mix of 20th century and contemporary works.

The usual flurry of clean cream and light wood decorated stands were given a run for their money by interior design dame Rose Uniacke. The London-based gallery displayed Scandinavian furniture including Hans Wegner and Mogens Voltelen's seating against a dramatic blue backdrop and darkened, weathered floors.

Carpenter’s Workshop Gallery presented Wendell Castle’s ergonomic seating, entitled ‘Veiled in a Dream’. Produced in the gallery's new research hub, the bronze furniture reflects the American artist's boldly sculptural vision fused with humour.

French designer Hervé Van der Straeten displayed his new abstract origami furniture pieces, inspired by spaceships and flowers, and German photography gallery Daniel Blau calmed the tone with a display of exhilarating NASA photographs, taken from space missions in the 1960s and 70.

Elsewhere, Gallery Fumi collaborated with I Vassalletti’s Francesco Perini, who divided their set up with an artistic patterned wooden screen that complimented the organic works (which included an LDF favourite in Max Lamb’s 'My Grandfather's Tree' chair).

It was New York’s Friedman Benda gallery who exhibited perhaps the biggest highlight of the show – Paul Cocksedge’s 'Freeze’ desk. The futuristic, metallic model contained a conceptual line up of copper, silver and gold panels on the tabletop; by being quite so reflective, you couldn't help but stare.

INFORMATION

PAD London is on view until 18 October

ADDRESS

PAD
Berkeley Square
London, W1

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Shortly before people crowded into Carpenters Workshop Gallery's Paris space to view Sebastian Brajkovic's latest series, the Dutch designer stood facing Vanishing Point IV and said, 'At some point, you have to sit on it.' Which he proceeded to do, as if to prove that the piece neither flipped over or sucked him into a vortex beneath the floor. 'Basically, I make sculptures but they have to be practical,' he explained.

To look at the work is to see an eighteenth century court chair elongated and distorted, sloping downward so that it simultaneously becomes a sofa and an optical illusion. If this is furniture, it is also a folly that invites a new way of thinking about perspective.

Brajkovic, who is now based in Paris, says he arrives at his overlap of classical and conceptual by thinking beyond his comfort zone. 'I ask if it's possible physically to make a piece like this. That's what you often find in sculpture; you see the impossibility. I try to show this tension in these works.'

As with his previous series, Lathe, Brakjovic roots his work in exceptional craftsmanship, from the patinated bronze chair frames to the silk embroidery atop cashmere wool. With Fibonacci, he elevated the elements further still, working with haute couture embroiderer Maison Lesage to achieve the raised, concentric patterning. Against the neutral toile, the metallic tracks of copper and silver catch the light and animate an already whimsical design. 'That was a long-term wish,' he said of collaborating with the couture embroiderer. 'I thought it would be exquisite if the [motif] started to live outside the fabric.'

Fibonacci, of course, gets its name from the Italian mathematician whose number sequence is closely related to the golden spiral, which is represented in nature by seashells and cyclones alike. Brajkovic's chair, meanwhile, presents the seat and back converging to replace two legs with a curling double tail. Instead of clay, he used 3D printing to create the cast. 'I had to be strong with this piece; there was a possibility that I wouldn't go on with it,' he confessed, relieved that it came out stable.

Where Fibonacci appears on a podium like a singular statue, two additional works share a section of the gallery with more reserve. Conversation Piece reimagines the confidante triangular arrangement so that all three seats are offset side-by-side and propped up by 8.5 legs (one doesn't reach the ground). Sleipnir, ostensibly a bench (its name refers to an eight-legged horse from Norse mythology), looks like it might gallop off when no one is looking.

Altogether, the five pieces stand as some sort of surrealist proposition with any number of possible readings; does the lozenge-shaped embroidery represent animal scales or an homage to M.C. Escher? Do the double spindles on both Vanishing Point pieces convey a glitch in time or a warped effect à la Francis Bacon (Brajkovic cited the artist as a strong influence)? 'I totally respect the spectators' ideas,' he insisted, before adding. 'These pieces are purely my expression of beauty; that's the sole message.'

ADDRESS

Carpenters Workshop Gallery
54 rue de la Verrerie
Paris, France

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PAD, the unaffiliated design adjunct to the Frieze London art fair, is now a settled fixture. And it makes for a civilised diversion, made even more civilised this year by the restaurant and bar design from David Collins Studio. It doesn’t though offer much in the way of surprises. In fairness, PAD, unlike Design Miami, has never set itself up as champion of new design. It is built around the Parisian 20th century design galleries who continue to unearth pieces from Prouvé and Perriand when logic suggests the supply must be thoroughly exhausted.

But there is adventure at PAD this year if you look for it. Cologne’s Ammann Gallery has new pieces from Turin-based Nucleo, even if they come off ancient as much as contemporary. The young British designers Faye Toogood and Bethan Laura Wood, now enjoying almost pop star status, have works at Gallery Fumi and Nilufar respectively.

Hervé van der Straeten, meanwhile, is presenting his own new designs; the French contemporary ceramics specialist Sèvres, a PAD debutant, has typically beguiling designs from Aldo Bakker; Galerie Kreo, recently opened in London, has new pieces from Doshi Levien; Friedman Benda fields new works from Joris Laarman; and Carpenters Workshop Gallery has genitalia-inspired lamps from Atelier Van Lieshout. As you do.

This year’s standouts though are probably the Garrido siblings, Juan and Paloma, who sell their own designs through an eponymous gallery in Madrid. Second generation silversmiths, the pair craft sculptural metal furniture in elegant ellipses and shattered shards.

ADDRESS

PAD London
Berkeley Square
London W1

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The 2013 edition of Design Miami at Art Basel is a new and most definitely improved version of the twice yearly exhibition that brings together international design galleries each December in Miami and every June in Basel to show their wares simultaneously with Art Basel. There is plenty of colour and quality, and a new tendency to combine the old and the new.

Perhaps it is the new venue - Herzog and de Meuron's addition to the Basel Messe site, identified by the monumental latticed metal ring at the centre of its design - that has inspired gallerists to up their game. Or that Design Miami, now eight years old and being deftly run by Marianne Goebl, has grown into itself and has a new sense of credibility.

Among the highlights are two new works at Paris-based Galerie Kreo by Hella Jongerius, both exercises in colour. The 'Dragonfly' coffee table overlays laquered glass and aluminium to create sections of solid colour, the glimmer of metal and moments of transparency; the 'Niebla' is a standard refectory table turned into a piece de resistance by a gradual layering of blush pink over its walnut top.

Meanwile, London gallerist Libby Sellers' stand is similarly chromatic. She commissioned recent RCA graduate Anton Alvarez to make new designs with his Thread-Wrapping Machine (see W*163) in colour schemes to co-ordinate with the other pieces on her stand. The results - appealing stools, totems and more - are flying off the stand and Sellers has had to warn buyers there'll be quite a wait, as each piece is hand-made.

The London-based Frenchmen behind Carpenters Workshop Gallery have teamed up with Galerie Steinitz, purveyor of antique rarities, to prove that Studio Job sits very nicely next to a unique 18th century commode, once the property of Madame de Pompadour. A lush 19th century apartment was constructed by a team of 21 over five days. The result, a room lined with embossed leather by contemporary designer Ingrid Donat and furnished with her boxy leather clad armchairs; another lined with George II boiserie, boasting a pretty minimal Rick Owens dining table finished in a dark matte lacquer.

The re-thinking of the W Hotels Designers of the Future award, which invites three young designers to create new work for Basel, has produced some worthy results too. This year, Jon Stam, Bethan Laura Wood and Seung-Yong Song were each sent to a W Hotel for inspiration - a mission with clear success. Stam's stint in Verbier has led to a black mirror in which views of the mountains throughout the seasons can be seen - a poetic portrayal of a place. Wood roamed the streets of Mexico City and returned to London to work with both Mexican and Italian glassmakers to create flower-like wall and table lights and large-scale chandeliers. And Seung-Yong Song - seeing how the city's sellers will attach wheels to just about anything on Bangkok's streets - has added them to his own neat contemporary storage systems in anodized aluminium.

Meanwhile a whole other side of design is celebrated by artist Mickalene Thomas at Better Days, an installation she devised as part of the Absolut Art Bureau initiative in the city's Volkshaus. In the spirit of her glistening portraiture, which features 1970s-styled women in heavily wallpapered interiors, she has reconstructed a fantasy 1970s suburban New York sitting room, complete with period chairs, wallpapers and even plug sockets. Fair goers dance on the patterned carpet until 2am every night, drink sticky 1970s style cocktails from a variety of chipped glasses and mugs and the American ones even get to charge their cell phones. It is just the sort of time travel and entertainment everyone needs at the end of a long day. Artful indeed.

Veteran Italian architect and designer Andrea Branzi, who set up radical architecture studio Archizoom in the 1960s and co-founded the Domus Academy, has packed his multi-decade career with regular exhibitions of his work, published manifestos, taught at various institutions and collaborated with various major design producers, but he's still not resting on his laurels. The 74-year-old has just launched a startling new series of shelves at Carpenters Workshop Gallery Paris.

Made up of aluminium and birch wood components, each shelf is subtly different in shape and format to the other. Intended to question the duality of the nature-culture relationship, the sharpness of the minimalist shelves is abruptly interrupted by rough tree trunks and twigs.

Situated in the 4th arrondissement, the new Parisian outpost of Carpenters Workshop Gallery is located in a space that formerly housed the influential Galerie de France, the spiritual home of the country's greatest postwar artists. Catherine Thieck, the Galerie de France's manager, has curated a selection of objects from her own collection, which are displayed on Branzi's shelves. They range from works by Marcel Duchamp and Constantin Brâncuşi to Méret Oppenheim and Rebecca Horn.

ADDRESS

54 rue de la Verrerie
75004 Paris

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