When I came across this recent article in the Australian Financial Review declaring that bespoke furniture is rivaling artwork as the focus for wealthy collectors, I was fascinated by the examples Stephen Todd, who wrote the piece, highlighted. The Pankalangu cabinet, designed for an aficionado of whisky so he would have a special piece of furniture from which to pour the rare malts he has collected, kicked off the article. The artist who created it, Trent Jansen, named the piece after a creature from Aboriginal mythology.
He covered the cabinet in scales made from layers of walnut ply and copper to create a beast-like skin, and included it in his “Broached Monster Collection.” Also in the series of unique creations is the Pankalangu Wardrobe, shown above, which is available on 1stdibs for $43,000. Jansen explained that the commission for the whisky cabinet was meant to satisfy a very important ritual in which his client engaged, and that he enjoyed the project because it allowed him to go into the psyche of the collector. “The object becomes the physical embodiment of their values and ideas,” Todd quotes the artisan as saying.
One-Off Furniture Comes to the US
Though Hand & Grain’s furniture stays in the here-and-now thematically rather than referencing the Aboriginal past, the craftspeople who make it have a visceral understanding of the passion that Jansen and other artists creating bespoke furniture put into their masterpieces. There is simply something to be said for the hand-made, and I can say this with ample conviction because I’ve watched the popularity of limited edition, bespoke and one-off furniture grow in this country during the past 13 years. Design Miami was integral at putting experimental furnishings on the map, and I attended the show each year beginning in 2005, eager to see what was being sourced by the gallerists invited to the fair. The displays of bespoke and one-off furnishings alongside vintage furniture with lauded provenance educated me as to the history and future of furniture design in one fell swoop.
As the years passed, names like the Campana Brothers, Studio Job, Marc Newson and Tokujin Yoshioka were bandied about by wealthy collectors because these visionaries stayed on the cutting edge of experimental designs. Before long, most of them landed licensing deals with major manufacturers and brought their vision to the masses while continuing to draw interest for their extraordinarily avant-garde creations. Newson’s Lockheed Lounge, made of riveted aluminum and fiberglass, shown above, set the record for the world’s most expensive design object when it sold for more than two-million pounds in 2015. The prices paid for designs like this have continue to be high.
These pioneers of edgy explorations inspired a veritable movement toward innovative furniture, one that the digital age has accelerated. When Sebastian Errazuriz’s Wave Cabinet, shown above, debuted during Design Miami, it was brought to the fair by Cristina Grajales, a New York gallerist whose DNA is infused with avant-garde style. Carpenters Workshop Gallery, also known for cutting-edge attitudes when curating design, would debut Pablo Reinoso’s Spaghetti Bench, shown below, in 2012. Whereas Newson’s early creations served as a thread extending from the mid-century modern heavyweights like Oscar Niemeyer, whose Rio rocking chaise and other pieces were the talk of the Design Miami in 2007, artisans like Errazuriz and Reinoso move the needle toward contemporary cool.
Also during the 2007 installment of Design Miami, Yoshioka created an ethereal environment on the top floor of the Moore Building where the fair was initially held. The Designer of the Year that year was chosen for “his ability to create boundary-extending design filled with emotion and grace.” The space was indeed infused with emotion, one of the pieces sitting throne-like in the midst of clear straws swirling around it like it had been given its own milky-way. This was the Honey Pop chair, below, made of wafer-thin sheets of paper similar to the kind used to make Chinese lanterns. It is now included in MoMA’s permanent collection.
Another annual event that has cemented the popularity of limited-edition and one-off furnishings in the US is the Salon Art + Design show that takes place in New York City each fall. More than 50 of the world’s most forward-thinking gallerists bring edgy design and vintage pieces with commanding provenance to the event. The featured image on this post was Nicholas Kilner’s booth in 2017 and the image below is a portion of the remarkable furnishings and art brought to the show by David Gill Gallery. You can see from the photo that bespoke furniture on par with the items being curated by gallerists like Gill will hold their own in any art collector’s home, no less stunning than what’s looming over them on the walls.
Strolling through the warren of booths one year, I spotted the actress Julianne Moore, an avid collector of vintage furniture, who was snapping up some fine mid-century modern treasures. Seeing her home in Architectural Digest magazine with the remarkable pieces she has found arranged in the handsome rooms proves how much personality vintage and bespoke can bring to an interior. You can see how personal she makes the art of decorating in the video the magazine produced.
The Millennial Impact on Bespoke
There is much discussion at the moment about the relevancy of antiques, vintage furniture and bespoke furnishings with future generations. It is said that millennials regard vintage and antiques as too stuffy. I have to wonder if they won’t be collecting the currently contemporary heirlooms of tomorrow like Hand & Grain’s offerings that includes the Freya sofa, shown above, when they come of age. I suppose we will have to wait and see whether they will eventually value quality and longevity over discounts and disposability to source hand-made furniture that will last far into the future.
Photo credits: for the images of the Nicholas Kilner and David Gill stands at the Salon Art + Design show, Peter Baker; for the Pankalangu Wardrobe, image courtesy Dan Hocking.