Story l STEPHEN TODD Design’s most interesting Portrait l JESSE MARLOW practitioners are embracing a hand-made ethos, a compelling antidote to the digital age.

CHAIRS MADE FROM BOILED LEATHER.

TABLES COMPOSED OF LAVA.

CABINETS HAND-FIRED IN CLAY.

SEA SHELLS.

STRAW, COPPER, CRYSTAL, CHARCOAL.

Materials typically used in handicraft are being turned into small batch, limited edition pieces by a raft of designers of mounting credibility and repute. xxx A glance at today’s design avant-garde suggests that while super-sleek mass production is not going away, it’s not where the innovators are at. “A lot of consumers today are interested in studio pieces, objects that are designed and manufactured by small teams working in their own, independent ateliers,” says Wava Carpenter, a former director of Design Miami and the brains behind pamono.com, one of the world’s most comprehensive websites selling international design. “There’s also a rising interest in things that used to be From left: Simon Hasan, Andrea considered part of the decorative arts – things Trimarchi, Gijs Bakker, Brodie Neill like glass, ceramics, woodwork, leather.”

NOVEMBER | THE AFR MAGAZINE 49 Left: Urn from the Botanica collection. Below: Craftica for Fendi used animal by-products. Opposite: pieces from De Natura Fossilium​ used lava from Sicily’s Mount Etna.

“We are in a post-industrial moment, overloaded with objects. It’s not of interest to us to just create more stuff.” Andrea Trimarchi, Formafantasma

London-based Simon Hasan is a case in Trimarchi and Farresin have taken the point. Hasan works alone in his studio with design world by storm since graduating one intern, creating intriguing furniture and from the ’ Design Academy tableware using cuir bouilli, the same method Eindhoven in 2009. “This generation is that was employed 500 years ago to make quite naturally asking the questions, do we medieval armour. Hasan boils leather until it need more objects, do we need more chairs? is strong enough to make furniture. His We are in a post-industrial moment, Bermondsey stool looks like a disc of rich, overloaded with objects. It’s not of interest caramel coloured saddle leather dripping to us to just create more stuff.” Forma fabulous down three shiny, lacquered brass legs. The The is a Geno chair is constructed from cold-formed hothouse for this new ethic. It does not When I first encountered the realised was that Etna is a mine was the way in which narrative each case the material research brass tubing and resin-laminated boiled structure its courses along traditional lines work of Formafantasma, I felt I without miners, constantly was seamlessly woven into the and innovation is primordial. leather so solid that it forms an aerated, of graphic, interior, product or industrial was witnessing a paradigm shift. excavating itself, spitting out design just as beautifully as the Spearheading a new arched back and base. design; rather, it has departments of Well- Perhaps seismic shift is more these incredible minerals.” brass threads that bisected the aesthetic, their work is deliciously The Wrap series of glassware is a set of Being, Leisure, Identity and Mobility. This apropos, since the furniture and Minerals such as lava, basalt and totemic side tables; the manner ambiguous, the means as three, laboratory-grade, hand-crafted open-ended, transversal approach and objects on show under the pumice stone, which the pair in which the objects were clearly interesting as the ends. At the borosilicate glass vessels cradled in sectioned research-led practice encourages students to banner of De Natura Fossilium​ turned into side tables, stools, intended to articulate a same time, there’s a quiet poetry leather which provides insulation and visual conceive the world, and the products they were the result of accumulated épergnes ​and clocks. discourse about locality, to much of it. And a respect – for interest. Fastened with turned brass fittings, are going to create for it, differently. materials from, and reflection Monumental and stoic, the authenticity and taste. And at the origins, for craftspeople, for they’re intriguingly sculptural, and speak to When I ask Trimarchi what he learnt upon, the massive eruption of collection pays homage to the same time, add sexy allure to a meaningful process. the new importance of hand-crafting. there, he doesn’t hesitate: “Firstly, to take Sicily’s Mount Etna in 2013. maestro of 1980s Memphis room. Working in a studio below In no way could Hasan’s pieces be deemed our work very seriously. Secondly, to be “We were hiking up the design, Ettore Sottsass,​ who Trimarchi and Farresin met at their home, the duo has three suitable cogs in Le Corbusier’s industrially independent. And thirdly, discipline. Most volcano at the time,” remembers also had a fascination for the design school in Florence. full-time staff and three produced, modernist “machine for living” – definitely discipline.” Other Eindhoven Andrea Trimarchi,​ who along with volcanic Aeolian islands of Sicily Sharing affinity, they became a freelancers on hand for when they’re too sensual to merely respond to alumni include Marcel Wanders, Hella partner Simone Farresin ​ is and Stromboli. xxx couple in life. After graduating production gets intense. All eight function. And yet, they’re not simply Jongerius, Tord Boontje, Job Smeets of Formafantasma. “And what we What was interesting to me the master’s course at Design are graduates of Eindhoven. If decorative, either. “I love craft and heritage Studio Job, Maarten Baas, and the Dutch Academy Eindhoven in 2009, their output looks low-tech, that’s and historical technique,” Hasan tells me. design collective, Droog – every one of them they became partners in their no accident: they adroitly “But I’m also a young man living in London producing quirky, highly original work that studio. Trimarchi is sidestep the allure of mass in the 21st century so I’m very interested in is eminently collectible and massively from the Sicilian town of production. But this is a new technologies. I’m a designer, so to my influential. Taormina, all glaring sun and business, and they are intent on mind it’s about bringing design and craft For his graduation show in 2002, Baas brutal landscape. Farresin is from growing it. So they’ve begun together, making connections – not divisions.” infamously took a blowtorch to a selection Venice, with its gilded light and accepting commissions from The integration of craft into design is an of baroque-looking furniture. Two years formal, Palladian exuberance. industrial manufacturers. increasingly compelling proposition. But it’s a later, in collaboration with New York design “We’re from very different places, “The problem is, most of the craft that’s far removed from the populist gallery Moss, he did the same to a selection it’s true,” Trimarchi acknowledges. time companies expect us to just reduction to macramé and thrown clay, a of iconic modernist pieces including Gerrit “But it’s rare that we have translate what we do at a studio nostalgia for 1970’s suburbia. It is much more Reitveld’s Zig Zag chair of 1934 and a different ideas about ways of level, our more experimental a recourse to the arts and crafts movement in dining chair by Charles and Ray Eames. approaching a project.” work, to the industrial context,” Britain and America in the late 19th and early Modernist design, Baas seemed to be saying, Projects such as 2012’s Trimarchi says. “But that’s not 20th centuries, which saw a return to is not an aesthetic inevitability. Craftica ​for fashion label Fendi, interesting. For us, when we craftsmanship and authenticity in the face of “Actually, modernism was never a huge for whom they explored the work for industrial companies we anomic industrialisation. In a similar way, the success on the mass market,” says Carpenter. potential of animal by-products try to feed into and change the massive advances in information technology “Its austerity was perceived as too severe, as by creating tanned salmon way big companies engage in can be seen as the impetus behind a renewed somehow denying yourself pleasure. Function leather and sea sponge stools; industrial production. That’s what interest in the finely crafted object, produced should include touching something in the tables of cow hide, Carrara we think of as our role in with thoughtfulness and integrity. Authenticity consumer, should create a feeling. It’s not just marble and brass; and jugs of industrial design. It may seem a is not just for hipsters. about the form. Today it seems to be more hand-blown glass, cow bones bit arrogant, but we are part of a “There’s an entire generation that is about ethics, labours of love, skill, deeper and leather. generation trying to change the working across design disciplines, stretching narrative, distinctiveness, individuality.” With Anatomica della Luce society.” the parameters of what was known as In March the NGV established a (2014) they created a chandelier In 2017 Formafantasma will industrial design,” says Andrea Trimarchi, co- department of contemporary design and from cow bladders and brass. In participate in the NGV Triennial, founder with Simone Farresin of Amsterdam- architecture, under the direction of curators Botanica (2011), urns were creating an immersive installation based Formafantasma, who I meet during Ewan McEoin and Simone LeAmon. In a crafted from hardened forest of documentation, video and September’s Parallels symposium on craft and sense, that new department is an extension wood, branches, unglazed product focused on the mining design at the National Gallery of Victoria. of the gallery’s well-established department ceramic and dewed shellac. In of valuable e-waste. ST

50 THE AFR MAGAZINE | NOVEMBER Continued page 52 NOVEMBER | THE AFR MAGAZINE 51 “I love craft and heritage and historical technique. But I’m also a young man living in London in the 21st century so I’m very interested in new technologies. I’m a designer; to my mind it’s about making connections – not divisions.” Simon Hasan

From previous page of decorative arts, and in that way the “We aimed for a collegial atmosphere, and relationship between design and craft is there was a lot of positivity from both designers directly interrogated by the curators. and makers,” LeAmon says. “This is really It couldn’t come at a more interesting time. important, since globally there is a huge shift to “We need to get over the idea that design and small-batch production and the alliance craft are antagonistic,” says McEoin. “There’s between these two fields needs to be strong.” no need to distinguish between them. Sure, Also at the Parallels conference was is generally mass produced whereas designer Gijs Bakker, who co-founded Droog craft is artisanal, but that’s increasingly with Renny Ramakers. Bakker used to head irrelevant. For the NGV, I want to assemble a the masters program at Design Academy collection of the most interesting people doing Eindhoven and is a maker of much-coveted the most interesting things.” jewellery, but he warns against romanticising The two-day Parallels conference drew a the handmade. “I hate craft, hate it!,” he dozen international speakers including laughs. “When I was making small production Milanese designer Antonio Arico, architect jewellery with Emmy [van Leersum, his wife] Shun Horiki from Tokyo, Cyril Zammit of people would come visit us and they would Design Days Dubai, Sasha Titchkosky of not be interested in what we were making – Sydney’s Koskela, which collaborates with just in watching our hands make it. Artisanal Indigenous artists, and Jon Goulder, creative can be seen as just a substitute, a nostalgia.” director of furniture at Adelaide’s Jam To be sure, industrial production is not Factory. There were also speakers from going away any time soon. But we are Southern Guild gallery which represents witnessing the rise of a new generation of South African limited edition design. xxx designers, an unaffiliated group of global “So much of Parallels was about trying to get creators who share a belief in authenticity, designers and makers in our sector together,” integrity, locality, historicity, a new materiality says LeAmon. Parallels also hosted a four-day – and encouraging alternative means of camp at architect John Wardle’s estate on production. A group that’s not in the least bit Bruny Island, off Tasmania’s south-east coast. interested in generating just more stuff. l

Clockwise from top: Wrap pendants; Bermondsey Stool; Wrap glassware and Slice Copper vases all by Simon Hasan.

52 THE AFR MAGAZINE | NOVEMBER “Tasmania is known for its designs in wood, and I did learn carpentry. But that was the founding stone of my process. From there I learnt how to use my sculptural eye, more than I learnt how to use a table saw.” Brodie Neill

Wandering eye Above: Brodie Neill in front of his Remix lounger and e-chair at the Brodie Neill’s designs are a slick, swooping loop, a Möbius With his limited edition pieces be, but his Cowrie chair and Rigg Prize, NGV. Right: Neill’s Alpha sculptural, sensual, technically strip in space. Produced by selling globally, in 2013 Neill rocker in plywood faced with dining chair. Below: Reverb wire exceptional. Each of his pieces Italian manufacturer Kundalini, its launched an industrial production ebony ash (its gentle form chair and below right: Wishbone also tests the limits of a lacquered fibreglass form keeps series Made in Ratio, working something of a riff off Eero Bench seat. technology. Stylistically precise, the eye moving along the from his headquarters in Saarinen) looks anything but they’re informed by an in-depth variable breadths of the London’s edgy Shoreditch, and mass. Neither does the Pleat knowledge of materials and how continuous strip. selling through select retailers bench, folded from a single they can be made to perform in The Remix chaise longue is such as Living Edge in Australia. sheet of Corian®. Or this year’s new ways. xx an extruded figure-8 shape, “Made in Ratio came from the Alpha dining chair in solid walnut A lot of that knowledge carved from a mixture of realisation that I don’t have to do or ash – so sensually shaped, comes from classical design reclaimed and sourced plastics everything myself. In fact, I you just have to touch it. training at the University of and woods. Amassed into a solid shouldn’t do everything myself. It Stackable, it makes great shapes Tasmania, Neill’s home state. “My block, the randomly arranged functions much as a diffusion in space. education there was very much splices are then carved into line does in fashion.” The “Why should a production hands-on,” says the now shape by a state-of-the-art 5 comparison is potent: Neill’s wife piece be any less beautiful or London-based designer. Axis CNC router. The Remix is a is fellow Tasmanian, fashion any less emotional than a “Tasmania is known for its limited edition of 10, each one a designer Fleur Watson. limited-edition piece?” asks Neill. designs in wood, and I did learn different arrangement of colours, Industrially produced they may Quite. ST carpentry. But that was the “each just slightly different to the founding stone of my process. other, adding interest to the From there I learnt how to use edition,” he says. my sculptural eye, more than I His @chair earned Neill a learnt how to use a table saw.” place on Time magazine’s best At the Rhode Island School of designs list for 2008. Not only a Design, where he completed compelling rendering of the @ post-graduate studies in 2004, grapheme into 3D, it’s also a Neill refined that sculptural eye. savvy commentary on our “I see things in form, in terms of immersion in Twitter culture. In negative and positive, line and fact, Brodie says, “I often see void.” This way of seeing has tweets from friends who spot my resulted in some exceptional work around the world, in sci-fi

pieces. For example, the e-chair, movies and corporate offices.” JESSE MARLOW

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