Salon - The Intersection of Art + Design - September 2022

Bernard Goldberg Fine Arts, LLC exhibits art, architecture and important design of the early 20th century. The gallery focuses on a dialogue between the modernist movements of both America and Europe with an emphasis on art as energized by the best of design. Located both on New York’s Upper East Side and in East Hampton, the gallery is an established source of scholarship for museum curators and architects, as well as a destination for collectors of high-end art and design.

New York City and East Hampton bgfa.com

James Knox, 1841-1917, The Sea and The Wind , c.1900 Carved Mahogany Relief 24 x 40 inches

Zsolnay (Hungarian), Eosin-Glazed Vase, c. 1910

Lobel Modern

Lobel Modern was established by Evan Lobel in New York City in 1998 to promote important 20th-century designers, whose originality and exceptional craftsmanship and materials transformed their works into art. The gallery showcases period furniture, lighting, art and decorative arts. Lobel Modern is a critical resource for designers, architects and collectors the world over.

Featured designers include: Karl Springer, Philip and Kelvin LaVerne, Gabriella Crespi, Paul Evans, Vladimir Kagan, Tommi Parzinger and Anzolo Fuga.

Lobel Modern 200 Lexington Avenue, Suite 915 New York, NY (212)info@lobelmodern.com10016242-9075

lobelmodern.com

COLLECTING RESPONSIBLY

We know from years of experience that collecting must be done legally and ethically. Phoenix Ancient Art has a long history dealing in antiquities, and we have learned from our extensive experience how to facilitate a trade that openly promotes cultural exchange. Our holdings are on par with any museum in the world, and we are committed to ensuring that what we buy and sell is collected in full compliance with all legal and ethical rules.

CONTENTS

11 Salon – The Intersection of Art + Design

A welcome to this year’s magazine from Editorial Director Jill Bokor By design: Anya Paintsil By design: Hugo Toro By design: Hubert Bonnet

By design: Roman and Williams By design: Cherine Magrabi By design: Charles Burnand By design: Ulysses de Santi Market dispatch

Collectible design is thriving, and Emma Crichton-Miller reveals the trends

Scandinavia dreaming

Claire Wrathall speaks to Pierre Raguideau about his collection of Nordic furniture Art is where the home is Terry de Gunzburg, founder of a global beauty brand, talks to Claire Wrathall about her passion for collecting, her eclectic taste, and what’s next

72 Supersize me

Furniture of monumental proportions is flourishing. Caroline Roux examines the reasons for this growing trend

The heart of glass Building on its history of practical use, a new era of designers is transforming this intelligent and beautiful material A Salon portfolio Galleries and partners present pieces that will be on show at this year’s fair Directory of Salon Art + Design exhibitors and partners

Twenty First Gallery

Twenty First Gallery is firmly established as an essential resource for contemporary European furniture and unique artworks in New York. The gallery’s showroom in Tribeca represents notable European designers and furniture artists, garnering international acclaim for its creative roster. Through participation in prestigious art fairs and partnerships with top interior designers, Twenty First Gallery has cemented itself as a rich source and cultural nexus in the escalating design market. Established in 2006, the gallery has drawn from its roots in Paris to introduce groundbreaking artworks made by master craftsmen that push the boundaries of furniture, objects and design.

76 Franklin Street, New York, NY 10013 United States

OF ART + DESIGN

As Emma Crichton-Miller points out in her insightful report on the collectible design market (page 45), we face an uncertain time in the world. Climate change, war, inflation and recession make for an unsettling moment.

And yet, the market for collectible design continues to thrive. There is nothing accidental about wishing to hunker down in our homes and wanting those homes to be as comfortable and expressive as possible. What began in the pandemic – a thirst for the new and imaginative to enjoy at home – continues unabated. This is true all over the world, which is why we bring you the most international edition of the magazine to date. This will also be reflected at Salon, where for the first time we will welcome exhibitors and partners from India and Egypt as well as Texas and Florida.

The magazine takes us to farflung places, too. We celebrate the work of a Welsh-Ghanaian designer who works with hair and braids in her narrative. A Los Angeles dealer of Brazilian modernist design, now more in demand than ever, talks about how he entered that particular market. A French-Mexican architect, currently working in the south of France, who has also done projects in Rome and Dubai is profiled, as is a Saudi-Lebanese collector and philanthropist who has many thoughts about Lebanese design today. So whether you’re an armchair traveler or collector or have plans to visit these fabulous places and projects, We hope you’ll share our excitement at learning about both established and emerging designers and their works.

As to trends in the design world, we learn that size matters. Along with a more maximalist sensibility in collecting generally, we find that there is a current vogue for oversized pieces. And high on the list of eagerly sought collectible design is glass, whether it’s mid-century Italian or the most current pieces by today’s makers. We look at what’s being sold and the fascinating new processes by which they’re being made.

As ever, the magazine presages the fair and here you will find a preview of work that will be exhibited at Salon by exhibitors and partners. From historical and contemporary lighting, from Brutalism to Nakashima, from the best of Royère and Line Vautrin, there truly is something for every taste and sensibility, which is the entire raison d’être for Salon Art + Design.

Thanks to our New York and London teams. Jennifer, Wendy and Jules on our side of the pond collaborated with the exceptional Cultureshock team: Paddy, Rachel, Sarah, Tess, Fonz, Claire and Caroline.

Thanks for reading and we hope to see you at Salon this November 10–14 at Park Avenue Armory in NYC.

Klove Studio

Prateek Jain and Gautam Seth bring intention to the objects they create. Founded in 2005, Klove Studio arose from a curiosity to explore the relationship between glass, light and craftsmanship. The New Delhi-based duo has been creating illuminated sculptures for residences and commercial projects in India for well over a decade.

Working with a team of skilled glassblowers and artisans, Klove’s pieces blend balance with deft imagination. Their large-scale installations are wild yet refined, the product of well-honed skill and artisanal craft complimented with inward searching and spiritual awakening.

Totems Over Time features reimagined symbols of age-old significance brought to life from handblown glass and metal. Each Totem references tribal icons and motifs, while adhering to modernist principles of sleek lines and art deco-inspired shapes. In this collection, Prateek and Gautam reinterpret power symbols from the past and create new forms of the sacred. They suggest the presence of a deity yet to be defined, one that represents spirituality in this modern era.

Klove debuts their work internationally at Salon 2022.

Exhibiting three TOTEMS , these editioned works are a metamorphosis born from years of a studio practice, which identifies the sacred in the everyday object, elevated.

J2 Greenpark Main Florence Nightingale Lane New Delhi, 110016 India

@klove.studioklovestudio.com

ANYA PAINTSIL

Discovered on Instagram during the pandemic, the Welsh-Ghanaian artist uses human hair and braids to tell her stories

When Anya Paintsil says, “I’ve been a hobbyistartist, a student artist and a professional artist,” you could be forgiven for assuming that a certain number of years have passed. But Paintsil, who makes compelling textile portraits using traditional rug-hooking techniques, is just 28. Thanks to a combination of the pandemic and Instagram, she started selling her work before she graduated from Manchester University in 2020. By 2021, she had shown successfully at both Ed Cross’s London gallery and at Salon 94 in New York. “Both Ed and Jeanne Greenberg [of Salon 94] found my work on Instagram during the first lockdown,” she says. “And that really opened up the art world to someone like me with no connections. But the pieces look twice as good in real life. There’s so much more depth.”

Indeed depth defines her practice. The Welsh and Ghanaian artist grew up among farmers; her work is imbued with her dual heritage and the crafts of her rural upbringing. Her chosen medium – latch-hooking, needlepunching – is one traditionally born of necessity, allowing small amounts of thread to create hardy, useful rugs and cover. But it is also laborious. For Paintsil, that is the exciting part. “Working on a piece is like solving a problem, and is what I like most about being an artist,” she says.

Meanwhile her subject matter is highly personal. Taken from photographs of herself and her family, her large-scale 3D wallworks deliberate on issues of race and identity, and incorporate both human hair and exhausted artificial braids – part artistry, part visceral narrative.

The series of works she made while still at university are in shades of pink, black and brown, with titles in Welsh that refer to her lived experience. “I didn’t grow up around many Black people, and it still offends me that people are so shocked to hear that Welsh is my mother tongue,” she says. More recent works delve into the storytelling culture of her father’s native Ghana, including the tale of folklore character Kwaku Anansi. “My dad used to tell me the story at night, about the man who disguised himself as a spider, or Anansi,” she says. “He’s a bit of a wide boy, a colorful character.” The change in subject encouraged a change of palette, and she has been working with vibrant lilac and green backgrounds that glow almost neon on the wall as the light fades in a room.

Paintsil will have a show at Hannah Traore Gallery in New York from this November. The subjects are to be decided but, she says, “I love stories and fantasies, and I am still exploring what it means to be who I am and how to celebrate my dual

Fromidentity.”left:Anya

Paintsil, Arianrhod a Lleu Llaw Gyffes (Arianrhod and Lleu Lllaw Gyffes) , 2022; Paintsil with When there are no trees birds will perch on men’s heads , 2022, and Flower face , 2022. Photos: Rocio Chacon, courtesy Ed Cross Fine Art

Curating the evolution of contemporary design since 1999

Twentieth merges the best of collectible design with emerging avant-garde talent, creating an environment that blends design and art into an innovative aesthetic vision.

Thomas Newman Studio, Pearl Chandelier, cerused sapele wood, 2020, 93” x 55.5” x 17”

HUGO TORO

For his interiors all over the world, the architect and designer draws inspiration from 3D modeling and his grandmother’s fabrics

Hugo Toro has been in the south of France, where he is working on a still-top-secret hospitality project. He’s been in Rome, too (for a high-end 100-room hotel). And Dubai (about villas and bars). And he’s talking to someone in the United States. His interiors for Gigi – with restaurants in Paris and Ramatuelle – are both festive and chic. In London, he created the sumptuous environs of the Booking Office 1869 restaurant and bar, in the St Pancras Renaissance Hotel, in 2021.

“What an amazing, historic building,” the 33-year-old says of the hotel, which occupies the former Midland Grand Hotel, designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott as a lavish Neo-Gothic fantasy in 1873. “And the station of St Pancras is also the gateway to France – it’s where Eurostar departs from – so I saw this space as a bridge between the two, like Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin.”

With its banquettes and bucket chairs upholstered in the finest découpe fabrics, intricate wood veneer finishes, burnished brass tables, circular chandeliers and dramatic palm trees, with 267 handmade leaves casting shadowy fronds on the ceiling, Toro’s interior is a testament to the golden age of travel brought subtly into the 21st century. “I’m interested in context first and foremost,” he explains. “That’s where I start.”

Toro grew up in Paris with his Mexican mother and French father, a doctor. “They met working at a Club Med in Mexico,” he laughs. He now works from a studio in a renovated apartment in Bonne Nouvelle, and lives near the delightful Buttes-Chaumont Park.

Back in France, his mother filled the house with color. “My Mexican DNA comes out strongly in my work,” he says. But while he has absorbed the vibrant hues of Luis Barragán, and the richly textured fabrics loved by his grandmother, there is also the rigour of Adolf Loos (which seeped in during time spent studying for a masters in architecture), and the experimental influence of Greg Lynn, who taught him in Los Angeles.

“It’s true, I like working with old techniques and 3D modeling,” he says. The London palm trees are a confection of metal and plastic, built from a 3D computer design. “I wanted to use stabilised vegetation, but it just wasn’t possible.”

For those wanting a piece of Toro, there is also a series of furniture, called Amanecer, made in yellow travertine, which he describes as partly a tribute to his mother. “Because there are some pre-Colombian shapes, as well as art deco and Brutalist influences,” he says. “But as I’m afraid of needles and could never have a tattoo, I see these pieces as my tattoos as well. They define my identity.”

Left: Hugo Toro. Right: Interiors of The Booking Office 1869 at St Pancras Renaissance Hotel. Photos: Alexandre Onimus, Michael Sinclair

66b Kensington Church Street London W8 4BY, UK Tel. +44 (0)7973 800415

Meret Oppenheim Switzerland, 1913-1985 Husch, husch, der schönste Vokal entleert sich, 1984 (Quick, quick, the most Beautiful Vowel is Voiding)

Meret Oppenheim designed this 18ct gold and hardstone necklace as a means to finance the retrieval and restoration of her painting of the same name and imagery that she had given to her lover Max Ernst in 1934, but which had been stolen in Paris during the Second World War, and which will be included in the retrospective of her work at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

HUBERT BONNET

The Belgian art and design collector describes his south of France outpost of CAB, with galleries, restaurants and rooms to stay the night

“Twentieth-century design is the perfect match for minimalist art,” says collector Hubert Bonnet. And if anyone is in a position to judge, then this 53-year-old Belgian most certainly is.

While he began his own art collection at age 30, acquiring works by Donald Judd and Robert Mangold (it also includes major pieces by Dan Flavin, Carl Andre, Michelangelo Pistoletto and Fred Sandback), among his design holdings are the best of Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret.

At his not-for-profit Fondation CAB, which was launched in 2012 and housed in an exquisitely restored art deco warehouse in Brussels, he regularly displays both strands together (as well as offering residency opportunities to young artists). “People love the conversation between art and design,” he says. But it is at CAB’s south of France outpost, which opened in a 1950s building in Saint-Paulde-Vence in 2021, that visitors can truly luxuriate in these conjoined interests.

There, two galleries show both contemporary and historic minimalist artworks from Bonnet’s collection – currently the luminous sculptures of contemporary artist Ann Veronica Janssens that pay homage to her Light and Space antecedents – while the onsite restaurant is entirely furnished with sturdy wooden tables and chairs designed by Charlotte Perriand for Les Arcs ski station in 1972. Those wishing to stay the night will find themselves in rooms designed by French interiors star Charles Zana, filled with further highlights of French mid-century design. For total immersion,

a Jean Prouvé demountable house is also available as a hotel room. While another, furnished exclusively in Prouvé’s work, is Bonnet’s favourite. “I always sleep there,” he says. “It’s a dream for me that all these pieces are no longer hidden away in a warehouse.”

Bonnet, whose family fortune comes from the steel industry, has personally pivoted to property development and seems almost as determined to collect houses too. They include a recently acquired villa in the well-heeled Belgian seaside resort of Knokke designed by Louis Herman de Koninck in 1937 – a minimalist architectural play on light and space that clearly speaks to Bonnet’s passions.

“Minimalism is really good for kids,” says the father of two. “It’s linear and geometrical. It’s quite wonderful to see how easily they understand and enjoy it.”

Right: Hubert Bonnet. Far right: Imi Knoebel, Mennigebild, 22/51 , 1976 and Ann Veronica Janssens, Ice blue Bar, 2017 at Fondation CAB in SaintPaul-de-Vence. Photos: courtesy Fondation CAB

ROMAN AND WILLIAMS

From film sets and furniture to paint and pop-up shops, there’s no end to the work of this interior designer duo with their glittering portfolio of hotels, homes and restaurants

Alesch and Robin Standefer. Right: The Top of the Standard, also known as the Boom Boom Room, New York. Photos: Sebastian Kim, Adrian Gaut

This year the design firm Roman and Williams is 20-years-old, with a phenomenal back catalogue of greatest hits to show for its two decades. In 2009, for example, its founders – Robin Standefer and Stephen Alesch –created a hotel where you could work, in the Ace in New York. “It was groundbreaking back then,” says Standefer. “No one else was doing that yet.” They are responsible for the Standard High Line Hotel – venerated in Steve McQueen’s outstanding movie Shame . They completely reconfigured the British Galleries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2020, bringing low-lit luxury and groundbreaking presentation to the business of displaying historical decorative arts.

They have created a paint range for Farrow & Ball, cafes for Facebook, pop-up shops for Goop, and offices for HuffPost. Readers might well know Le Coucou, the haut de gamme restaurant in Aby Rosen’s 11 Howard hotel, with its hand-painted murals of romantic landscapes. This fall, their thorough reworking of the old Fulton Fish Market in Manhattan reopens as a 53,000sq ft food destination of restaurants, cafes and groceries overseen by Jean-Georges Vongerichten. “It’s now called the Tin Building,” says Standefer, promising that “it will delight and engage every one of the five senses”.

Their story goes back much further, however. The pair met working as set designers in Hollywood in the 1990s, and having worked on many movies – Practical Magic and Zoolander among them – they became the go-to couple for A-listers on the search for their own interior designers. Ben Stiller, Kate Hudson, Gwyneth Paltrow… the list goes on. “In a film,” says Standefer, “we would pick a car or a coffee table specifically for how it brings the character to life. For a home or a hotel, we similarly aim to connect the objects to the personality, or the community, being served.” They prefer the word “found” to “vintage” when it comes to the plethora of items they are able to weave together to create multi-layered but coherent environments.

Also this autumn, their first new range of Roman and Williams furniture in five years (the name, by the way, comes from their respective grandparents) will be on offer at their own RW Guild space in New York’s SoHo.

The original series made much use of hardwoods and leathers that improve over time. “We’ve always honoured the handmade, and we’ve definitely seen an increased appetite for this quality in interiors,” says Standefer. A clue to their evolution, and mission statement

CHERINE MAGRABI

For collector Cherine Magrabi, founding House of Today in Beirut in 2012 was just the start of her ambition to bring Lebanese design into the spotlight

In 2012, Cherine Magrabi launched House of Today in Beirut, a unique hub to support and advise Lebanese designers, and to sell their work. A decade on, she is pretty pleased with the results. “When you say Lebanese design now, it means something,” she says. “There is a significant scene. We’ve tapped into local crafts and made them contemporary; we’ve created momentum.” It’s all the more remarkable when you consider Beirut’s recent background of chaos, including the horrors of the 2020 Beirut explosion (which devastated the Gemmayze district where many designers are based), the global pandemic and a totally failed economy.

Now designers including Nicolas Moussallem and David Raffoul, Stephanie Sayer and Rami Dalle operate on the international stage (Dalle has designed windows for Hermès), while others have benefited from the House of Today fund, which enables young Lebanese people to study at local institutions or farther afield. Magrabi’s

initiative has sent students to the Rhode Island School of Design, for example, and the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp. Magrabi, born in Jeddah to Saudi-Egyptian and Lebanese parents, started out as both an interior designer – she studied in London at the Chelsea School of Art – and a collector. With her husband, Ahmed Tayeb, she has artworks by artists including Alex Katz, Keith Haring, Andy Warhol and Richard Prince, as well as an impressive holding of both contemporary and vintage design. “I started collecting [George] Nakashima early on,” she says of the Japanese/American master of wooden furniture, famous for his raw-edged work. “His prices have gone so high I wonder if I would buy it now.”

She has also worked closely with Londonbased Italian Martino Gamper. “I really do have a lot of his work,” she says. “He’s fantastic, and he’s evolved so beautifully as a designer while staying true to his aesthetic.” Special commissions include a laminate and metal table that splits into four parts, and an exquisite children’s desk and bookshelf. “The children are now 24, 21 and 20, but that piece will be with me forever,” says Magrabi.

Bearing in mind Beirut’s recent, and indeed current, turmoil, the House of Today’s 10th celebrations will be suitably thoughtful, with workshops and lectures. But a permanent installation involving many of the designers Magrabi has mentored will be installed in the Public Library in Beirut. “It’s one of the city’s most important cultural buildings,” says Magrabi. “I think, or at least I hope, we’ve earned our place there.”

CHARLES BURNAND

Paying tribute to his grandfather with a new gallery in London, Simon Stewart’s commissions combine highly refined materials with traditional techniques

Charles Edward Burnand was a north London grocer with an entrepreneurial streak. So he would doubtless be proud to see his name above the door of London’s newest design gallery. Simon Stewart opened the Fitzrovia space in April, and walks there every morning from his Marylebone home. “I never met my grandfather,” says Stewart. “But I’ve always loved his name – such gravitas – so I named my gallery after him. Without the Edward.”

Stewart works closely with his artists and interior designers, including Robert Stilin and Jenny Fischbach in New York, to develop unique and limited-edition works in highly refined materials, often using age-old techniques. “We have a master craftsman in Brittany who does all our straw marquetry,” he says, giving an example. “It’s such a noble art to take this humble material and turn it into something luminous and exquisite.”

For Ellie Cullman, of Cullman & Kravis, he recently took on the challenge of a site-specific chandelier, four meters tall in cast bronze and Murano glass. It now hangs over a sweeping stone staircase in a home in Connecticut that sits on its own peninsula. “Other people might say, ‘It’s not possible’,” says Stewart of the commission, which he designed himself. “But we never say that.”

Stewart puts this drive down to his training and subsequent 17-year stint as a professional musician; for him, the design business is a successful second career. “Music is all about determination, willpower, dedication, sheer hard work,” he says. “And I’ll admit, I had an illustrious career, freelancing with all the major orchestras, including the London Philharmonic.”

But his mother’s influence was never far away. Cathy Stewart had been in charge of the flower arrangements in the windows of the Liberty department store, when she was discovered by Elizabeth Taylor, and went on to work for other distinguished clients, from Twiggy to Princess Margaret. From here, she began to advise on interior decoration. “She had quite a cult following,” laughs her son, who started working with her in 2013. “I simply exchanged sound for vision,” he says. “But I feel I have more control in this part of my creative journey.”

Now running the business with his partner, Michael Totten (“He does the financial side, thank God”), Stewart’s stable includes designer Alexandra Champalimaud, craftsman Callum Partridge and the artist Pierre Bonnefille who works with mixed media and bronze powder on metallic mesh. Stewart also creates his own designs to client’s requirements.

“No one needs anything we make,” he says.

“But they might want it.”

Maison Pouenat

Following in the traditions of French Decorative Arts, Maison Pouenat combines a perfect mastery of traditional decorative Paris,22timelessapproachandPouenatthetoknow-how.andcommittedcreation,designs.EditionestablishedlimitedpresentingcontemporarywithpiecesMaisonlightingitsdesignintoclassic1960s,contemporaryinnovativetechniquesironworkingwithrichforms,finishesinaspirit.Sincetheithasexpandeditsironworkingactivitiesbespokearchitecturalprojects,anddevelopedfirstfurnitureandcollection.Pouenatmanufacturesmadeincollaborationgreatnamesindesign.Bysignedcreations,to48pieces,ititselfasthefirstGalleryincontemporaryThrougheachitscraftsmenaretoperpetuatingreinventingtheancestralFromthedrawingsmodels,manufacturingtodecoration,Maisonoffersatechnicalartistictailoredmadetogivelifetoartisticwork.bisPassageDauphine75006France pouenat.com

“BRAZILIAN MODERN IS ABOUT PEOPLE MARKING OUT A NEW LIFESTYLE”

ULYSSES DE SANTI

As one of the few people to focus exclusively on Brazilian Modernist design, the LA-based furniture expert’s collection is in very high demand

Jay-Z and Beyoncé’s campaign for Tiffany & Co – filmed in the extravagant Orum House in LA in 2021 – offers a feast of art and design. The house itself, a three-storey, fully glazed affair, was designed by Zoltan Pali in the 2010s, and was recently on the market for $56m. A multimillion-pound Basquiat hangs on the wall. But aficionados of Brazilian furniture will surely have been most thrilled by the Cubo chair, a piece of late Modern perfection by Jorge Zalszupin from the early 1970s, on which Jay-Z sprawls in a sharp black suit. “That’s my chair!” says Ulysses de Santi. “Jeanne Greenberg had called my partner about finding a house in LA for the shoot, and we lent some furniture.”

De Santi’s husband is the art dealer Graham Steele, while de Santi himself is one of the few people to focus exclusively on sourcing and selling 20th-century Brazilian Modernist design. “Growing up in Brazil when I did, you were surrounded by Modernism, especially Niemeyer’s architecture, and it gets under your skin,” says 41-year-old de Santi. “I found myself wanting to know more, then I discovered all the incredible furniture designers – Jose Zanine Caldas, Sergio Rodrigues. Some, like Joaquim Tenreiro and Zalszupin were immigrants, from Portugal and Poland respectively, and fell in love with the natural resources that Brazil offered. Their love of its superb varieties of vibrantly coloured wood – such as jacaranda and peroba – resonates through their work.”

“Brazilian modern is about people marking out a new lifestyle,” says de Santi. “As a former Portuguese colony, Brazil’s style favoured thick

velvet curtains in Baroque palaces. It didn’t make any sense.” The Modernists reflected instead the inherent ease and joy in Brazilian culture, bringing a decidedly sensuous twist to the established European blueprint. De Santi, who worked in TV and as an actor in Brazil, took a career turn when he moved to LA to be with Steele. (The pair met in São Paulo in 2014 at a White Cube opening for the artist Larry Bell. Bell was best man at their wedding.) “I brought all my furniture with me,” says de Santi. “And friends and Graham’s clients would come to the house and just want to talk about it. Or buy it!” The business he then set up with art dealer Cecilia Tanure has become a huge success. “We don’t have a gallery,” de Santi explains. “But we try to put on four presentations a year in different cities – there’s one in London this fall. And with Cecilia and myself both being Brazilians, we like to put on a bit of a party, too.”

FEB 12, 2022 - JAN 8,

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DISPATCHMARKET

In uncertain times, collectible design is thriving. Emma Crichton-Miller discovers the trends that are leading the charge

As we go to press, there is no knowing what global crises will confront us in the fall. The past few years have brought political upheavals, a pandemic and a land war on the edge of Europe, all against the background of impending climate catastrophe. A worldwide recession looms. And yet, despite these challenges, the market in collectible design is

Auctionbooming.houses

in Paris, New York and London are seeing record prices for 20th-century design, with more than $75m spent by collectors in June alone at Christie’s and Sotheby’s in New York, over the course of five design sales. That same month, Phillips New York registered new records for artists as different as Shiro Kuramata, Jennifer Lee and Doyle Lane. Prices continue to reach eye-watering levels for the current blue-chip leaders in the field – works by Les Lalanne, Diego and Alberto Giacometti, Carlo Mollino, Jean Prouvé and Jean Royère – while the art deco market shows vigorous growth and Tiffany continues to draw strong interest in the US. In-person art fairs with strong design participation – NOMAD, FOG Design + Art, PAD Design + Art, Design Miami and Salon Art + Design – have returned to find eager audiences. Above all, however, business has been resurgent for galleries.

As Marc Benda of New York gallery Friedman Benda comments: “It was quite astonishing how the market came back after the shock of Covid.” There are several reasons for this. Benda suggests that, while in general the collectible design market has become increasingly aligned with the financial and real estate markets, it differs critically in the response of its main participants to global crises. “You are not insulated from these things, but you are buying something for your home. You are acquiring something that gives you pleasure.” Even the highest priced design objects – FrançoisXavier Lalanne’s languorous Léopard I (2005), for instance, for which the winning bidder paid €8.3m ($9.7m) last November at Sotheby’s Paris – are appealingly more affordable than much contemporary or Modern art. Many people have also noted that lockdown, specifically, turned the critical gaze of collectors upon their own homes. Cristina Grajales, speaking from her newly opened space in Tribeca, reports, “Our homes have become our refuge, an oasis, the only place where we feel safe.” She adds, “Because of this new understanding of our spaces, the market has increased and expanded. Within younger audiences we have seen a new type of curiosity and hunger for information.”

Valerio Capo, co-founder of London-based Fumi gallery (with Sam Pratt in 2008), returning to the fair this year, says of the first year of the pandemic: “After complete silence for five months, our clients started to come back to us. As people became more attuned to their domestic spaces, they wanted to make them more beautiful. We are seeing more interest in what we do, from both collectors and interior designers.” From Paris, according to Laurence Bonnel of Galerie Scène Ouverte, a newcomer to Salon, the report is the same: “In our experience [the market] is now very dynamic. We can see that very limited-edition pieces meet a lot of success. People want to have very special works that have a history.”

Adrian Sassoon, meanwhile, a Salon stalwart, notes the opportunity that lockdown brought for his team to up their virtual game, using online tools to develop conversations and reach new Previous François-Xavierpage: Lalanne’s languorous Léopard I (2005), which sold for $9.7m in November 2021 at Sotheby’s Paris

audiences. “I am an old dinosaur. Earlier in my career, I was posting transparencies to collectors, which often were images of an object like a target in a coconut shy,” he says. “Nowadays we can pop a scaled image into your room setting a continent away and you can see it on your screen in a moment.” As a consequence, he suggests, “Over the past three years, we have sold more wonderful works of art to collectors whom we have never met from across the world than ever before.” He also notes the steadying support of art fairs “that remain in the same place and at the same time as always. Likewise, the level of exhibitors being sustained at these art fairs gives visitors confidence in the permanence also of the works of art we Butpresent.”ifthemarket is buoyant, where is it trending? Art consult ant Astrid Malingreau suggests that today’s collectors of design are looking for an emotional connection with the pieces they buy. She observes that this is shared by the designers who infuse into their works “very personal ideas or memories or physical experi ences of material”. This is, of course, not new. Malingreau suggests it’s a revival of ideas from pioneers of the 1960s, “who understood that design did not have to be limited by the form/function

Below: Jean Royère’s Chaise Longue (c.1940), which sold for $88,200 at Sotheby’s New York in December 2021

dialectic”. She has also noted the rise in popularity of what has been called “neotenic” design, identified as a trend in 2019 in an exhibition curated by archi tects Justin Donnelly and Monling Lee in Brooklyn. Neotenic design is “cute” furniture, characterized by soft or rounded edges, bul bous shapes and mono-materi als, evoking babies or puppies and inducing a sense of comfort. “The world is scary. You want a comforting home,” Lee suggests. Similar qualities might account for the popularity at auction of works by French post-war designers Jean Royère and Pierre Paulin.

The search for comfort has also been noted by Benda. “We used to joke that we have sold 1,000 chairs that no one sits on and that has changed markedly. Certain studios have veered in the direction of usability and we have started working more with designers in this area.” Benda cites the recent work of Faye Toogood and Raphael Navot, which the gallery will be showing at the fair, where typology – chair, table, stool – “is very much part of the original concept”.

“Good designers were always interested in typology, but usually our conversations started with, ‘I have found a technology that no one is using’ or ‘I have had a chance to bend a material to my will’. With Navot, the starting point was ‘Let’s see what an incredible sofa can look like,’” Benda comments. The gallery’s booth will reflect this shift in focus: “[It] could be well described as a drawing room, with some important accents by contemporary designers. Whereas some people used to put a piece in their living rooms on a pedestal with a light on it, which turned their homes into a gallery, that has reversed. [The design] is really integrated, with a piece that makes you think alongside the children’s playpen and drawing room

furniture.”AtNomad

Capri this summer, color was a major feature of many booths’ presentations. Capo, who exhibited there, suggests that “playful, colorful, joyful works are becoming more and more popular.” Grajales confirms this, saying of her audience, which is largely based in North America and Europe, with growing interest from Asia and the Middle East: “In terms of trends, people have had a new interest in color and experimental new materials. There is a curiosity about natural materials like mycelium and other plant matter.” Certainly sustainability has become a big theme, with artists such as Fumi’s Casey McCafferty drawing attention to the way even the by-product of his woodworking – sawdust – is used creatively. Benda confirms that, at every level, the integrity of the process has become increasingly important to collectors. He says, “There is always a cheaper way to do something – you can just go to an anonymous fabricator in China and get 98% of what you want. But working with that one chiseller in France or that one supplier of certified wood to a Chilean studio, this is very different. Ethical factors play an important part.”

The vintage market has also seen a renewed interest in natural materials and one-off crafted objects. Bob Aibel of Moderne Gallery,

“THE STUDIO CERAMICS MARKET HAS BEEN GROWING FOR QUITE SOME TIME, AND IT’S BEGINNING TO TRULY FLOURISH”

Philadelphia, a leading figure in the market for American studio furniture, explains that while domestic trade has been erratic, in response both to Trump and Covid, he has found new clients in Europe and Asia. “George Nakashima is still a very active and growing market throughout the world. Fortunately, it’s leading more collectors to look at and purchase historical and contemporary studio furniture by talented, lesser-known makers.” He adds: “The studio ceramics market has been growing for quite some time, and it’s beginning to truly flourish.” This has been observed around the world, with galleries increasingly adding ceramists to their roster and prices at auction rising steadily (think of Magdalene Odundo and Jennifer Lee). Andrew Duncanson, director of Modernity, based in Stockholm and London, notes that alongside increased interest in vintage Swedish designers such as Axel Einar Hjorth and Otto Schulz, “we have seen a much greater interest in ceramic art recently. We sold 15 pieces of ceramics at Masterpiece in London, for instance. We are also selling ceramics well on our website.” They will be showing a young Swedish ceramic artist, Alvina Jakobsson, at Salon.

Almost all gallerists report that, above all, even this side of a sequence of challenges, American collectors remain more audacious than their European and Asian cousins. In terms of scale and a readiness to fall in love with new work, there is a boldness that has survived Covid. It is this confidence and excitement that has drawn galleries from across the globe to New York this fall.

“WE USED TO JOKE THAT WE HAVE SOLD 1,000 CHAIRS THAT NO ONE SITS ON AND THAT HAS CHANGED MARKEDLY. CERTAIN STUDIOS HAVE VEERED IN THE DIRECTION OF USABILITY”

DREAMINGSCANDINAVIA

What does it mean to be the only Parisian gallery specializing in Nordic design? Claire Wrathall speaks to owner Pierre Raguideau about his collection of furniture

Pierre Raguideau was in his mid-30s when he decided to open a gallery. As a child in the historic French city of Nantes, he’d been taken to antique shops by his parents, which “probably sparked my interest in beautiful furniture”. But it was encountering pieces by the likes of Hans Wegner, Børge Mogensen and Finn Juhl as an adult in Paris that really caught his imagination. The snag was that his then-wife was also harbouring ambitions to become an art dealer. “We decided it probably wasn’t a good idea if both of us launched our own businesses, because we needed to live.”

He needn’t have fretted for her venture. Founded in 1993, Galerie Nathalie Obadia has grown into one of Paris’s foremost contemporary art galleries, representing the likes of Laure Prouvost, Fiona Rae, Mickalene Thomas and Wang Keping, a carved-wood sculpture by whom Raguideau has just added to his collection. “I was very influenced by Nathalie’s taste,” he concedes. “It took me some time to be freed from her influence and develop [a more abstract aesthetic of] my own.”

But lest her enterprise fail in its early days, he stuck with his day job, forging a successful career in the financial management of “large IT groups”, and rising to be chief financial officer of “quite an important listed company. It was interesting,” he continues. “And I had good wages. Not a fortune,” but sufficient to fund a growing collection of mid-century Scandinavian furniture. He still dreamt of the gallery he’d hoped to open and “On the day I retired, I created a company and started to buy stock and look for a store.” He settled for a showroom on Rue du Turenne in Paris’s Marais district, where Galerie Pierre Arts & Design finally opened its doors in September 2020. He was 62.

With the pandemic ongoing, “it was a difficult decision,” he admits. But the site was ideal, “close to all the important contemporary art galleries. Rather than risk letting it go, I said to myself: ‘If you wait for the sea to be calm and the sun to be shining to start, you will never set sail. You are ready to go, so let’s go.’”

In any case, the market was rising. Two months earlier, Christie’s Paris had held its first postlockdown Design sale and achieved its best-ever result in the category, realising more than €12 million (with fees) and finding buyers for 80% of lots. Confined to their homes by successive lockdowns and more mindful than ever of their surroundings, collectors were keen to buy furniture.

Admittedly, the stellar lots had been mostly French. “Scandinavian design has always been less popular in France than in northern Europe and the US,” he says. “I think because France and Italy had their own Modernist design movements. If you look at auctions, it’s obvious that the biggest prices are currently made by Pierre Jeanneret, Georges Jouve, Jean Prouvé, Charlotte Perriand and Italian designers such as Gio Ponti.” But the comparative scarcity of Nordic design in France – his is now the only gallery in Paris to specialize in it – gives it cachet.

“WHEN I’M BUYING FOR THE GALLERY, I BUY AS I WOULD FOR MYSELF”

Raguideau tends to buy “from a network of people mainly in Scandinavia. Though there is a lot in Germany too, probably because – again, this is my own interpretation – the country was destroyed after the war, and people who had money wanted to get rid of the past and project themselves in a new age with new furniture. I think that’s the reason the German upper middle class bought a lot of Scandinavian design in the 1950s and 1960s.”

Two years on, Galerie Pierre stocks a range of distinguished mid-century furniture principally but no longer exclusively Nordic, by the likes of Gustav Bahus, Peter Hvidt & Orla Mølgaard-Nielsen, Torbjørn Afdal, Erik Kirkegaard, Ib Kofod Larsen, Kai Lyngfeldt Larsen and Arne Vodder, as well as Juhl, Mogensen and Wegner. But it has also begun to diversify, first into lighting and ceramics, now into art too, specializing in paintings and photographs by “undiscovered” Paris-based artists such as Kassia Knap, Shitomi Murakami and Benjamin Bēni, which Raguideau exhibits in room sets configured to evoke domestic settings.

“It’s what I like to do at home,” he says, referring to the way he juxtaposes furniture by Wegner with traditional Ashanti stools from Ghana and Senufo ones from Côte d’Ivoire. “Wegner created

nearly all his pieces in wood, and I love the way that Senufo and Ashanti stools are also carved from a single piece of wood. Their shapes, their curves, are very modern. And there is a purity in their form that makes a connection with Modern design, I think.”

The real challenge for a collector-turned-dealer, however, lies in deciding what to sell and what to keep. “When I’m buying for the gallery, I buy exactly as I would for myself. And when the pieces arrive, the first thing I think is: ‘That would be great in my home.’ Really I would like to keep everything. Some things I have to force myself to part with.” For example, “I recently sold two very nice armchairs by Hans Wegner from my personal collection to the new Dior boutique on Avenue Montaigne. They were the ones now known as The Chair [JH-503]. But that’s just what art dealers do. Sometimes you just have to sell a piece in order to buy something else.” (Those chairs were soon replaced by another Wegner fauteuil.) But best of all is the contentment his “new life” has brought him. “Going off to work has never felt easier,” he says. “I’m so happy when I’m at the gallery.”

From far left: Torsten Johansson rosewood tray, 1950s; Étienne Fermigier floor lamp, 1960s-70s; and Torbjørn Afdal sideboard, 1960s.

Photos: Courtesy Galerie Pierre Arts & Design

Boccara Gallery Inc

Boccara Gallery is a leading international gallery specializing in prestigious modern, antique tapestries and artistic rugs.

For 30 years, the Boccara Gallery has never ceased to renew itself by its audacity and its style under the impulse

of Didier Marien. Boccara aims to bring a different art world together: tapestry, sculpture and Didierpainting.Marien has been a precursor in collecting modern tapestries of the 20th century and in discovering artists who are pivotal in art history

today (Mathieu Matégot, Marc Saint-Saëns, Émile Gilioli, René Perrot). Boccara also owns a collection of artistic rugs from 20th-century artists such as Pablo Picasso, Albert Gleizes, Fernand Léger, Francis Picabia etc. and works in collaboration with contemporary American artists (Benjamin Ewing, Anna Mac, Ellen Richman, David Stein) to perpetuate and offer a contemporary vision of textile art.

Didier Marien has chosen to combine his 20th-century tapestries collection with contemporary sculptures (Wang Keping, Pollès, René Coutelle, Laurence Bonnel, Monique Rozanes, Anton Smit, Antoine Leclercq) and contemporary paintings (Clément Rosenthal, Léon Zack, Flore Sigrist, Serge Charchoune) to create an original world of elegance.

232 E 59th Street New York, NY, 10022, United States +1info@boccara.com(347)585-8580 boccara.com

BRUTALISM BEAUTY OF

As a medical student in Paris in the 1970s, Terry de Gunzburg supported herself with a variety of casual jobs: working in a florist, wrapping presents in a department store, supervising playtime at a school. What spare money she earned she would spend in Paris’s flea markets, buying on instinct and honing her eye. Her first stellar purchase, made when she was 20, was a Picasso plate, made in Vallauris in the south of France and purchased for 10 francs – not much more than a dollar, “but a lot of money for me,” she recalls. “At that time, you could find all sorts of things in the Marché aux Puces de Saint-Ouen. I also remember buying a piece by [the great ceramicist Georges] Jouve for about $15,” she continues. “It was nothing!” Especially when you consider that his vases now tend to change hands for five figures. But art should never be thought of as an investment, she insists. “It’s a feeling, a sensibilité. That’s the first rule of buying. If you don’t love it, forget it! You should never buy anything just because you think it’s undervalued.”

It’s clear she was destined to become a collector. She and her husband, the eminent molecular and cell biologist Jean de Gunzburg, went on to acquire paintings and sculpture by many artists, including Francis Bacon, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Louise Bourgeois, Alexander Calder, Alberto Giacometti, Antony Gormley, Anselm Kiefer, Agnes Martin, Henri Matisse, Amedeo Modigliani, Pablo Picasso, Robert Ryman and Pierre Soulages. And she soon developed a passion for furniture. Witness her museum-quality assemblage of Art Deco by designers such as Jean Dunand, Paul Dupr é -Lafon, André Groult, Marc du Plantier, Eug è ne Printz and Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann, as well as several fine pieces by Jean-Michel Frank and a Polar bear sofa by Jean Royère.

She loves decorative objects too. On the shagreen-covered top of one of the Frank tables, she displays a collection of cigarette cases and powder compacts by the likes of Cartier and Boucheron, among them a rarity designed by Salvador Dalí for Schiaparelli to look like a telephone dial. She inherited these from her grandmother, an English national of Jewish, Turkish and Syrian descent who was forced to leave Egypt, where de Gunzburg was born, for Paris after the Suez Crisis in 1956 with the rest of the family. Apart from her diamonds, they were all she could carry.

“My grandfather never got over the fact he was reduced to living in a one-bedroom apartment,” she says, though her grandmother did her best to keep up appearances, always exquisitely attired and living as though “she was still in Cairo. She was very alive and fun and had very good manners. She would say: ‘Keep your bonne humeur.’” And pay attention to your maquillage, advice that de Gunzburg took to heart when, much to her father’s chagrin, she quit medical school. Her plan was to study architecture at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, but in the intervening vacation she enrolled on a four-week course at Carita’s Maison de Beauté. This led to an opportunity to work as a make-up artist during the couture fashion shows, an experience she so enjoyed that she abandoned academia for fashion and beauty. By the time she was 30, she was working for Yves Saint Laurent, where she invented the miraculous reflective under-eye concealer Touche Éclat and rose to become creative director of its beauty division. In 1998, she founded her own nowglobal skincare and fragrance brand, By Terry.

“ART SHOULD NEVER BE THOUGHT OF AS AN INVESTMENT, IT’S A FEELING”

Meanwhile, she continued to collect, though lately she has begun to focus on ceramics again. “I’ve always loved them,” she says, speaking from her sea-facing house near Tel Aviv. “Ceramics and porcelain of all kinds.” Recently back from New York, where another of her five homes designed by Jacques Grange is located, she’d been specially struck by the ancient Egyptian galleries at the Metropolitan Museum. (She is an avid museum-goer.) “Everything comes from there!” she exclaims. Picasso, Constantin Brâncuși. “It’s amazing. It’s so contemporary! But it’s very difficult to buy [antiquities] now because the good pieces are all in museums.”

If her collection began with Picasso and Paul Jouve, its other highlights number “some extraordinary pieces by Lucio Fontana and Maurice de Vlaminck. But now I’m buying works by living artists,” both emerging and established. She singles out two French ceramicists: Nelly Bonnard and Stéphanie Larène. “I’ve been pushing” – she checks herself – “advising them to go beyond their boundaries, to do [in Larène’s case] tables and more furniture.” Just as Jouve did. (Earlier this year, Christie’s sold a Jouve table with a ceramic top for €1.06m.) “It’s super-interesting and it’s also a way for me to support artists. That is part of the joy of collecting.”

Details from de Gunzburg’s London home, including candlesticks and a Chinese puzzle ball

She particularly praises the dealer Louis Lefèbvre of Paris’s Galerie Lefebvre for the artist residency he runs in Versailles. There, artists can spend up to three months working in a studio – in what was once a music pavilion built for Louis XVI’s sister Élisabeth –after which they are given a solo show. “It’s wonderful!” she says. “I’m following several of them.”

And it’s this that has given her an idea for a philanthropic venture of her own. “My dream is not to open a museum just to flatter my ego. But maybe one day I will sell my company and part of my collection and open one, along with a place where ceramicists can train – education is so important – and make work undisturbed. Maybe in Provence [where she has another home]. It’s a little bit pretentious to say it, but we could transform our house into a residence for artists, something like the Villa Medici. Provence has such a wonderful ceramics culture. And the colors… And the clay… I’d love to do something like that.”

Even after more than 40 years of collecting “not compulsively, but if I like a piece and I can afford it, I buy it,” she has yet to sell a work of art. “Though I’m thinking of it to fund my project. Jean and I started collecting Les Lalanne 30 years ago and we have stores full of it. It’s ridiculous.” (And though she doesn’t say as much, hot, as far as the market is concerned.) “So maybe one day we’ll part with Havingthat.”had to leave almost everything they owned in Egypt, “my mother always told me ‘never get attached to any object or anything material’.” The place for art, she always said, is in a museum. “That is where real art lovers go.” As a child, there were regular family visits to the Louvre. And, to this day, de Gunzburg is “moved by the sight of people queuing to see art. I’m sure they adore Picasso much more than any wealthy collector. You don’t have to have one at home to appreciate it,” she says. This perhaps explains the equanimity with which she overcame the breakage, by one of her nephews, of that first Picasso plate. She doesn’t deny that it hurt. “But these things happen! One shouldn’t over-dramatise!”

Far left: Basquiat,Jean-Michel Famous Moon King , 1984 (detail), and a dessert set that belonged to Lord Mountbatten. Left: de Gunzburg’s collection of straw marquetry

The subject of scale comes up a lot these days, especially among architects and designers, some of whom have been recalled by clients whose apartments have miraculously grown. “We went back to see a client on the Upper East Side because she’d just bought the apartment upstairs,” says one. “Once we’ve combined the two, it will completely change the way she is going to live and the size of the spaces she’ll occupy.” Another, a lighting designer, talked about installing a chandelier that would swamp any other room he’d ever previously worked in. While a third noted that “All our clients are moving to the next size of yacht, and the dining table to seat 24 is a basic requirement.” Size, it seems, is everything.

Individual designers are responding by going large. Simon Stewart, profiled on page 36, notes that one of his gallery’s most iconic pieces – Mia Jung’s Cloud Console table, a near-ethereal design in hand-silvered Murano glass – began at just over a metre in length. “But then we increased it to 1.5m, and now we are making it as a two-metre table,” he says. “That’s the new requirement from architects and designers.”

“We’ve been working at a larger scale for a number of years,” says the San Francisco-based interior designer Douglas Durkin. “I have two furniture designers on my team, and we aim to never repeat the same thing twice. It’s very old school and embraces

craftsmanship. We’re currently working on custom daybeds for a house on a lava flow on the Big Island of Hawaii. They are amorphic and sinuous and will stretch up to 15ft.”

Durkin, however, is equally keen to commission some of the design world’s major players. Recent works include 12ft-long bronze Two legs and a Table by Ron Arad, which had to be hoisted into a penthouse apartment on Fifth Avenue; and a bronze light, 12ft in diameter, by Dutch artist Frederik Molenschot (who is represented by Carpenters Workshop Gallery) for a supersized Californian living room. “It floats in this beautiful large space,” says Durkin.

For Parisian architect Charles Zana, this new normal has led to the development of a series of furniture that is infinitely scalable. “I sometimes design for very spacious houses,” says Zana. “You would have to install two, three or even four sofas to complement a drawing room. Sometimes it’s a much better solution to use one really big one.” Zana grew up surrounded by his parents’ daring taste in rule-breaking contemporary furniture, and is now finding it to be a useful touchstone.

“In the 1970s in France, when there was a more utopian view, people had those huge enveloping sofas you would all fall into together,” he says. Zana’s current answer is the “Alexandra”, which encloses its own space and can be reconfigured specifically according to the shape of the room. “It’s my Tunisian couch, if you like,” he says, referring to his own heritage, and the multi-occupant sofas that are found in North Africa and the Middle East. There is also the chic and sinuous “Julie”, which Zana has been known to place diagonally in a space. His Isfahan table, with a gently pitted red travertine top and patinated bronze legs, starts at three metres.

For rising US design star Misha Kahn, this upsizing trend has led to increasingly complex and exciting commissions, particularly for his bas relief tapestries, which are hand-woven at the Stephens Tapestry in Johannesburg, South Africa. “The larger the work, the more detail and information you can add,” says Kahn, who is represented by New York gallery Friedman Benda and works across many media including glass and bronze, as well as incorporating found objects and refuse into his work. “For one collector I made an enormous piece: she sent me a list of every creature in the Antarctic and I managed to include every one of them. It was a wonderful opportunity. I saw it as a collaboration.”

Another commission, also from a contemporary art collector, was for a 14ft-wide headboard. “There’s a level of bravery involved,” says Kahn. “And the bigger and braver, the better and better.”

Every generation the age-old practice attracts bold new experimental artists and these designers are no exception, finds Caroline Roux

The crumpled vessels that Jeff Zimmerman makes in glass are mysterious objects. Mirrorised, opaque or crystal clear, in each one he pushes the fluid nature of his chosen material to its absolute limits. For Zimmerman, though, they are not really about glass at all. He is a conceptualist, simply using glass to ruminate on the individuality and imperfections of the natural world.

“Could you actually use them, put something in them?” I ask his gallerist Zesty Meyers, the co-founder of R & Company, himself a former glass artist. “You could,” says Meyers. “But you wouldn’t. They are studies, they’re drawings. They are also exceeding what you think are the limits of the material.”

Glass-making is an ancient practice – the technique is at least 4,000-years-old. And yet it has never ceased to invite experimentation and reinterpretation. “Over the years I’ve seen changes both within the community of glass makers as well as with collectors,” says Douglas Heller, who has run his eponymous gallery since 1973. “Right now the design world is especially interested in glass. Designers such as Lindsey Adelman, Harry Allen, Ron Arad and Jorge Pardo use it to great effect in lighting and other projects. Glass is a challenging, even humbling, material to work with. But for some, the allure of this supercooled non-crystalline substance is irresistible.”

Others, like the highly skilled blower Bjørn Friborg, take an iconoclastic approach to the process of making. To make his powerful

Previous page: Maria Koshenkova, Faun Flesh I , 2022. This page, below: Bjørn Friborg, Implosion works. Photo: Joe Kramm, courtesy Hostler Burrows. Below right: Carlo Scarpa, Decoro Finicio vase, 192829. Photo: Kurt Rodahl Hoppe; courtesy Glass Past

Implosion works, Friborg punches into the blown form while it is still hot, creating a sense of extreme movement. “It’s a whole new technique,” says Juliet Burrows, co-founder of New York gallery Hostler Burrows, which represents the artist. “And it’s all very rock ’n’ roll. He sometimes wears a boxing glove to do it.”

Burrows remarks on the increasing interest in glass among those who collect contemporary art, though it doesn’t have to be contemporary glass. Sara Blumberg and Jim Oliveira established Glass Past in 1995, specializing in Italian pieces made between 1870 and 1970. “I think we were really drawn to the mystery of accomplishment,” Blumberg says. “It’s such a few basic elements, and yet produces these beautiful objects.”

“Museums with an interest in contemporary studio glass have increased dramatically. The Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk VA and the Flint Institute of Art in Michigan include glass making studios as part of their facilities,” says Heller. “The exposure these institutions offer helps ignite public interest and expands audiences.”

Rare works, such as the complex Mosaic vases created by Ercole Barovier in the 1920s, now change hands for $200,000–300,000. “They mostly go to private collections,” says Blumberg. On occasion the same prices can apply to more recent works. Those by Yoichi Ohira – who started as a fashion designer before creating works in Murano glass that are a dazzling blend of Japanese restraint

“THE ALLURE OF THIS SUPERCOOLED NON-CRYSTALLINE SUBSTANCE IS IRRESISTIBLE”

and Venetian mastery – can reach $500,000 or more at auction. “There are only about 600 pieces,” says gallerist Pierre-Marie Giraud. “People really fight to get their hands on one.”

Blumberg’s personal favourites are the opaque vases made by Italian architect Carlo Scarpa during his brief spell at manufacturer M.V.M. Cappellin & Co in the 1920s. “We usually think about transparency,” she says. “But he highlighted the surface using gold leaf, or the corroso technique.” (The latter creates a stone-like finish.)

It’s perhaps no surprise, then, that she has works by the wunderkind Thaddeus Wolfe in her own collection – a practitioner who has entirely reversed the transparent qualities of glass for his architectural works made of stacked component parts. Wolfe blows into polystyrene foam or plaster moulds, then works the material when it’s cold. Sometimes he adds color with thin rods of pigmented glass. ”It’s hard to even tell that it’s glass,” says Carole Hochman, a director at Friedman Benda, who will show Wolfe’s work at Salon. “It’s carved and polished, and at times quite playful. Equally it’s very thoughtful and painterly work.”

But what defines glass for many is its liquidity, and its ability to create the interaction of light and color. For that, the simplest forms of the material deliver pure delight. In the hands of Londonbased Jochen Holz, off-the-peg tubes of richly colored glass are transformed into vessels that he describes as “between figuration and abstraction”, as well as jewellery and lighting. His latest series is La Belle et la Bête – named for the surreal scene in Jean Cocteau’s 1946 film where arms holding candelabra suddenly appear through the walls of a corridor. The first piece, a chandelier, was launched at London gallery FUMI this year: an artful mass of clear glass tubes, bent, wiggled and bound together with delicate steel ties. It is another joyous experiment in the many things that glass can do.

“IT’S HARD TO EVEN TELL THAT IT’S GLASS – IT’S CARVED AND POLISHED, AND AT TIMES QUITE PLAYFUL”

Charles Burnand Gallery

Founded in 2009 by Simon Stewart, Charles Burnand Gallery is an internationally renowned Gallery and Studio with a reputation for representing established and emerging designers and artists from around the world.

Charles Burnand Gallery’s ethos is forged out of curiosity for design and materiality; an understanding that worldclass collectable design is a process which takes time - the time to consider details, develop, research, the time to make. We search for and represent artists who share this ethos.

With a wealth of knowledge for materials and cutting-edge technology the Charles Burnand Studio has become an invaluable resource and go-to destination for designers, architects and collectors who wish to commission bespoke, unique, collectable design; appreciators of the finest materials, innovation and time-honoured techniques.

27 Whitfield Street, London W1T 2SE United Kingdom

charlesburnand.com

Caleb Zipperer, “Gilda Settee”. H. 90 x W. 290 x D. 115 cm. Wood, hand-woven boucle

Highlights from this year’s fair

DIRECTORY OF EXHIBITORS

Adrian Sassoon – UK adriansassoon.com

Ariadne – US ariadnedemirjian.com

Armel Soyer – France armelsoyer.com

Bernard Goldberg Fine Arts bgfa.com

Boccara Gallery – US boccara-art.com

Carole Davenport Japanese Art –US caroledavenport.com

Converso – US conversomod.com

Cristina Grajales – US cristinagrajales.com

David Gill Gallery – UK davidgillgallery.com

Dobrinka Salzman Gallery – US dobrinkasalzman.com

Donzella –US donzella.com

Friedman Benda – US friedmanbenda.com

Galerie Artempo – UK/US galerieartempo.com

Galerie Carole Decombe – France/US galeriecaroledecombe.com

Galerie Chastel-Maréchal – France chastel-marechal.com

Galerie Gabriel et Guillaume – Beirut / France / USA gabrieletguillaume.com

Galerie Marcilhac – France marcilhacgalerie.com

Galerie Negropontes – France negropontes-galerie.com

Galerie SCENE OUVERTE – France galerie-sceneouverte.com

Galerie Vallois – France vallois.com

Galerie Yves Gastou – France galerieyvesgastou.com

Gallery All – China / US galleryall.com

Gallery FUMI – UK galleryfumi.com

Galerie Thomas Fritsch –Artrium – France thomasfritsch.fr

GARDE – US gardeshop.com

Glass Past – US glasspast.com

Heller Gallery – US hellergallery.com

Hostler Burrows – US hostlerburrows.com

J. Lohmann Gallery – US jlohmanngallery.com

Karl Kemp Antiques – US karlkemp.com

Le Lab – Egypt thisislelab.com

Lebreton Gallery – USA / France lebretongallery.com

Liz O’Brien – US lizobrien.com

Lobel Modern – US lobelmodern.com

Magen H Gallery – US magenxxcentury.com

Maison Gerard –US maisongerard.com

Maison Rapin – France maison-rapin.com

Mindy Solomon Gallery - US mindysolomon.com

Moderne Gallery – US modernegallery.com

Modernity – Sweden modernity.se

Opera Gallery – US / UK / France / Switzerland / Asia operagallery.com

Ornamentum – US ornamentumgallery.com

Pace African & Oceanic Art – US paceafricanart.com

Phoenix Ancient Art –Switzerland / US phoenixancientart.com

Portuondo Gallery – Spain / UK / US portuondo.com

R & Company – US r-and-company.com

Tambaran Gallery – US tambaran.com

The Future Perfect – US thefutureperfect.com

Throckmorton Fine Art – US throckmorton-nyc.com

Todd Merrill Studio – US toddmerrillstudio.com

Twenty First Gallery – US 21stgallery.com

DIRECTORY OF PARTNERS

Special Design Exhibitions

Amy Lau Design amylaudesign.com

Charles Zana zana.fr Didier Ltd didierltd.com

klove Studio klovestudio.com

Lauren Adriana laurenadriana.com

Twentieth twentieth.net Wilensky Exquisite Minerals wilenskyminerals.com

YVEL yvel.com

Lead frenchCALIFORNIAPartners

frenchca.com

Moët & Chandon moet.com

Industry Partners

Flower Power Daily flowerpowerdaily.com

Turon Travel turontravel.com

Global Media Partner

Financial Times – How to spend it ft.com/htsi

Media designboomPartners

designboom.com Dezeen dezeen.com Cultured culturedmag.com

Cultural Partner DIA Art Foundation diaart.org

Preferred Shipping Partner Convelio convelio.com