Although Riccardo tried to make me give up, not finding what I’ll describe fitting in his own taste, I decided anyway to post a report on the silver pendants of the Israeli artist “Frantic Jewels”.Perhaps it’s because they seem to be hybrids creations, between Rodcenko and Kyoichi Nanatsuki’s manga, perhaps because I love the five-pointed star and the Soviet realism, or perhaps just because it is always so difficult to find curious and unusual, and not ethnic, jewelry for men . Of course some ‘can be described as challenging, but undeniably sensational, as much as the pendants he created by using pieces of the clocks mechanisms.
In his engravings, Dan Hillier draws from the fairy tales imaginary and from the Victorian’s graphics, permeating it widely with the surrealist language, filled with citations coming from literature and art. Like every dream-like image, the evocation of other images and the mind associations is entirely personal and subjective. Among those that I chose to post, I see Max Ernst, a lovercraftian Wilhelmina Harker, Bosch, even Lewis Carroll. It is up to you to tell what you see.
Now that I broke my Tibetan seal, I find it difficult to find a ring able to replace it. I would like it masculine, large and possibly in silver. I have always thought to rings as objects able to catch the inner me, able to call me, a sort of amulet, as the one that I had when I was a child, the one with the green stone that I used when playing the “Green Lantern”.
My reference when I decide to feed my “gothic/dark” side, it is always the fantastic “Lady Lavona’s Cabinet of Curiosities”. This is where the beautiful rings in silver and bronze, creations of Eric Sæter, come from: primordial, magical. You can not say that these objects are “mute”. For the first time I am attracted by golden items. Eric has been able to give, even to them, their own terrifying aura.
As a person used to and attracted by products resulting from rigour and design logic, I was specially struck by Mario Pandiani’s pieces of furnitures. His language is the absolute opposite of that. He defines his pieces as “undesign”, using bits of antique objects and furniture, that come together again, emotionally, into a brand new blend, “raw” and poetic at the same time.
Lou Rota has not invented anything new by recycling old plates and decorate them with images of beetles and scarabs. The theme, already present even on eighteenth century Meissens, is exalted to excess by having insects much larger than flowers. And yet I find it altogether even more enjoyable, though grotesque, and the price affordable if you’re interested in an entomological collection on porcelain. Also noteworthy is the raven dishes series; it is the first time I see it represented on a flat plate and not as a porcelain statue. Absolutely to be displayed on the wall!
After having been working as a blacksmith and having attended courses of jewelry and design, the German artist Silke Wrede now offers her own line of jewelry in silver, enameled in various colors, in strictly geometric shapes. The geometrical development of the plan in the space, the resulting contrast between empty and full, the exasperated geometry, these are the typical features of her jewelry. In addition to rings,brooches and pendants, Silke Wrede also manufactures lamps and garden furniture. The forms and the approach to the design are the same: what it changes are the scale, the function, the material.
After having been working for several companies on order and after having even cooperated with the hat stylist Philip Tracey, the ingenious creators of wallpapers and fabrics Alistair McAuley and Paul Simmons founded, during the ‘90ies, the Timorous Beasties. An exclusive brand, whose purely artisanal production of fabrics and wallpaper, made them famous everywhere and able to detain, thanks to their creativity and refinement, the absolute primacy in the field.
“Glasgow Toile” plus detail, Découper wallpaper, “London Toile” pillow
Their reinterpretations of the “Toile de Jouy”, which carefully observed reveal contemporary elements, are truly provocative. Take for example the the Foster tower in “London Toile”, or characters such as drug addicts and prostitutes in “Glasgow Toile”: this is their way to face the issue of social decay of their city. The inspiration to William Morris is declared, especially seen that the Timorous Beasties boast the fact of being among the few able to take part in the creative process and to monitor the whole production at the same time.
The works of Iri5, aka Erika Iris Simmons, hit mainly thanks to the cunning with which the artist evokes common images with modern technic and surprising skills. But this is only the mean. Admitting she “loves the nostalgia of the archaic”, it’s with this same melancholic spirit that she “steals” items, that otherwise would be lost, from the oblivion, freeing their soul to make it easy perceptible to the public. “Ghost in the machine”, a series of works in which she materializes the faces artists like Bob Dylan, Robert Smith, Tom Waits, through the coils of old cassettes mounted on canvas, is a perfect example of this dualism between nostalgia and re-interpretation of the pop culture. In the majority of her work, the material used is, however, paper, recycled from old books. In “Will I am Shakespeare” for example, the portrait is entirely composed of a wonderful collage of “cut-up” of the author’s sonnets.
Cutlery, which are normally objects of daily use, are reinterpreted with a unusual and varied sensitivity in the works created by Giovanni Scafuro. His approach is almost ironic and the result is unique for the set of cups and for the jewelry in silver, steel, nickel silver. For chandeliers and sculptures, the expression becomes more refined and poetic. The compositions of spoons and forks, placed in perfect balance, create some entirely new objects, without concealing the almost obsessive reworking of the original object, which is instead its own essence.
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