Lennart Van Uffelen says that functionality kills the fun, but it could also be said that killing functionality is fun, but not, kill the funny functionality.
Lennart Van Uffelen: Funcionality Kills the fun
May 15th, 2013 _ Comments Off _
Galerie Secula Marzaux : a pair of shagreen side tables.
May 13th, 2013 _ Comments Off _
Spotted today at the flea market in Saint Ouen, two 1950′s side tables that are surprisingly light weight, as I believe the metal to be folded sheet bronze so it is hollow, and the table top in shagreen on wood. They are also sturdy, you don’t get the feeling that they could topple over as you do with other side tables of this era. Quite warm looking they would work in a technophobic interior that couldn’t take either light weight or 1959′s style.
Hella Jongerius: Sphere Table
May 11th, 2013 _ Comments Off _
When I first saw this desk I thought it was a rather gadgety decoration reminiscent of Woody Allen’s film “The Sleeper”. But having had someone walk in and out of the room where I’m working all week I’m now rather tempted by Hella Jongerius design. If I were to tweak it in any way it would be to incorporate lighting, it’s something that would most likely be eventually added and it could work really well or flop. May as well control the gesture. Why not some LEDs along a part of the hemispheres rim?
Zelouf and Bell: Koi Noir
April 24th, 2013 _ Comments Off _
The marquetry on Zelouf and Bell’sKoi Noir table is not your usual polite decorative borders, it is more like wood tattoos, a bold individual statement. There is a fluidity to this image that is not usually found in marquetry even with images of koi carp. (I know I’ve googled them.) It’s is the second time that they’ve used this pattern, the first time it was a coloured version for a New-York client. This time they wanted to try something more monochrome with naturally stained woods inlaid into bog oak with has been hand lacquered.
Decorative applied arts haven’t really been big in vogue with designers since the art deco period. Having been through a design school myself I understand how modernism made you feel that you were being silly if your design was anything but functional. There is definitely a snobbery about the use of certain styles, which has been gradually loosening up in the last few years, which is a good thing, as art deco never lost it’s popularity amoungst those who hadn’t been taught to look down on decoration.
At the Zelouf and Bell’s exhibition in the Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris, I was rather shocked by a comment in the guestbook, accusing them of plagiarism. Apart from the fact that none of their designs are pre-existing, there is no shame in producing designs with an art deco influence. They have made it their own and pushed to the limits of what they are capable of, creating something fresher and finer. This critic would probably accept a contemporary jazz musician playing a cover version of a jazz era tune, and admire what they have bought to it. Using cultural references and an understood language of styles, deepens our connection to a work. Like with fashion houses, Gaultier or Chanel, nothing is a hundred percent new, just some things that are very well expressed and perfected upon.
Zelouf and Bell: Gazelle desk
April 24th, 2013 _ Comments Off _
Zelouf and Bell’s Gazelle desk manages to be both fun and distinguished masculine and feminine all that the same time. The main body of the desk is of quarter sawn and oiled oak, which gives it great texture and strength. The rest is of ebonised walnut legs and wenge on the pulls. Not all woods have the same qualities or behaves in the same way, so it takes some quite serious expertise to play the different woods well. Like with good cooking, the results of this remain largely unseen at a glance, but can begin to be appreciated as you get close up. It is really over time, as it ages well, that is true value can be understood.
One of those close up details that’s pretty rock and roll has to be the hematite pulls, “like nipple rings,” Zelouf and Bell said. These close up details are always a charming discovery with their work. My favorite detail appears on all their work, it’s the way they sign their mark in inlaid polished aluminium, the stamp of style.
Zelouf and Bell: Black Mamba
April 23rd, 2013 _ Comments Off _
I love animal tables. Zoomorphism make furniture feel like part of the family rather than just a functional object. Like a pet dog it’s a kind of extension of who you are, only you don’t need to feed it or bring it out for walks. It also makes an excellent alternative to taxidermy which has been having a bit of a moment right now.
Zelouf and Bell constructed the leg of this table like a winding back bone. The ebonized cherry vertebrae are separated by polished aluminium discs. How it all stands up is their secret. This is one of many pieces that Zelouf and Bell have made in black, they even came out with a whole collection just in black recently. There is an old decorating trick, where you put a black object in a room and it makes all the other colours look clearer and cleaner. Black has already become popular in interiors and it looks like a trend that’s not likely to fade.
Zelouf and Bell: Monolith, scarred and healing
April 22nd, 2013 _ Comments Off _
Zelouf and Bell love the adventure of collaborating with an artist. In the case of the Monolith scared and healing console the adventure was with Danish artist Jorn Ronnau, who sculpted directly on the piece with a chain saw, resulting in a sort of controlled anarchy. On close examination what is really extraordinary isn’t the grooves cut into the wood, but the bumps that are proud of the surface. After Ronnau made his cuts, the wood would have been smoothed down further, giving a clean finish that frames the cuts. It’s a juxtaposition of a silky skin and the gnarly scars, which have weathered together like an Irish landscape.
Zelouf and Bell: Dolmen
April 22nd, 2013 _ Comments Off _
Prehistoric Dolmens must have been a piece of cake to construct compared to Zelouf and Bell‘s Dolmen table. You don’t see many slanting lines on curved surfaces for a good reason, they are very tricky to do. But I suppose when you have a team of master craftsmen there is the opportunity to do tricky things. The Dolmen table has a beautiful swish to it that would not be possible without a high level of woodcraft expertise.
There is a dramatic version of this table on bespokeglobal.com in ebony and birdseye maple, but the one that I saw was in the Irish Cultural Center in Paris, the grayed oak version. As you move around it you can really appreciate the play of the direction of the grain. It’s as if the cylinder that was the tree has been deconstructed and the wood has reassembled itself into another more ritualistic cylindrical with a new more powerful expression of the essence of the wood. Perhaps you could make a wish if you walk around it three times.
Zelouf and Bell: Fan Desk
April 21st, 2013 _ Comments Off _
The Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris currently had an exhibition of furniture by Zelouf and Bell until April 26th. From their workshop in country Laoise in Ireland they produce an eclectic array of fine furniture. Some work is art deco inspired like this piece, but there is something a little more complex than that going on, and if I had to use some kind of style label for their studio it would be haute goth.
The fan desk is one of those objects that in all simplicity is an elegant tour de force of design and skill, executed in macassar ebony and iced koto. There is a large volume of storage space which doesn’t make it visually heavy. Over all there is a fantastic balance to it, this piece seems to put it’s weight on the central two pairs of legs and then lean outward to rest stabilized on the outer leg. I reluctantly say that it’s feminine as there is nothing girly about it at all.
Zelouf and Bell told me about how the worked with the client, and the room with two columns overlooking the sea that it was made for, and how, just as the desk was finished they weren’t too happy with the tone of the wood inside the drawers, it was too yellowy for their taste, so they ripped it out and did it all again. There’s some dedication to detail for you.
Studio Makkink & Bey: Education Trestles and Easels
April 15th, 2013 _ Comments Off _
This ultimate transformer table was designed for the Boijmans van Beuningen Museum by the dutch design firm Studio Makkink and Bey. Makkink an architect, and Bay a graphic designer, run a multidisciplinary design studio where boundaries are broken down with lateral thinking that produces original design ideas such as this. A trestle is made to be adaptable and mobile, but this one is even more so. This table has multiple configurations, regular table, extended table, small individual writing table or easel.
The main material is HPL (high pressure laminate) and it comes in different colours. These can be interchanged and joined with metal edge pieces, that extend the multi-functionalism as they can also be used as a pen holder with the easel configuration. The unused parts of the system can be stored away on a stacker system that has the coloured table tops facing outwards like an attractive panel. The HPL legs are another element that looses the corporate feel that tables designed for collective use have,with functional metal tubes.
I imagine that the one big frustration that you’d feel with this poly-functioning system, is when you want to take a table top from the stack, and your favourite colour is at the bottom, so you end up having to make do with another colour instead.
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