With the dream of owning a huge house comes the anticipation of an expansive back yard, where you can extend your design aesthetic into your outdoor spaces with amazing furniture. I first saw Opiary Design’s DrilliumChair at ICFF 2021; snapping a few photos and making a mental note to find out more about this exciting ‘green’ design. When I saw the chair again recently at ICFF 2022.I knew the time had come to feature it in this space, because it is just fantastic. Continue reading Eye On Design: Opiary Drillium Club Chair→
Suitable for either indoor or outdoor use, Jonathan Trayte’s MelonMelonTangerine loveseat (2019) brings together different colors, textures and forms supported by a tubular frame of powder-coated steel in a warm, sunshine yellow.
Installation View with Bikini Squash Sculpture
The seat incorporates a variety of natural and man-made fabrics including a nylon-weave lower ‘shelf,’ black leather seats, cowhide upholstered seatbacks, and leather headrests, with furry wool armrest covering and polished brass accents. A mounted disc of polished marble provides a small table for holding your afternoon cocktails, or whatever you please.
Photographed at Friedman Benda Gallery in NYC as Part of the Exhibit, MelonMelonTangerine.
A unique take on the concept of ‘Indoor/Outdoor’ furniture is perhaps unintentionally offered in British artist Jonathan Trayte’s recent exhibit of sculptural art furniture, MelonMelonTangerine, at Freidman Benda Gallery. Intended to transport the viewer to an otherworldly botanical garden, pieces like the Black Dakota Lamp (2019) combine industrial materials such as stainless steel, bronze, polymer compound, and reinforced plastics, and brass leaver, with a base covered in crushed glass, and blown-glass light sconces to create an eclectic light-emitting tree.
This and other works in the collection were inspired by Trayte’s recent 2000-mile road trip through the Western United States. With a keen perception and eye for the obscure, the artist finds the surreal in our everyday surroundings and within the fabric of daily life. Realized while in isolation amidst the current pandemic, he recalls hazy visions of sedimentary rock formations, Joshua trees, lichens, silver cholla cacti and prickly pear fruits to inform this new body of work. We are excited to be featuring more whimsical works from MelonMelonTangerine in the coming weeks!
The Swiss-born designer Matia Bonetti is known for his irreverent, eye-grabbing, and (often) dazzlingly shiny functional objects. Bonetti enjoys playing with both organic and geometric forms rather than adhering to a consistent style. Created from Gold-plated bronze, cast aluminum, and rock crystal, the Liquid Gold Cabinetcombines the two aesthetics, the designer offers, “because it’s quite straight in line, but you have all these ripplings that are more informal. They could be called Baroque, with their guiding and the richness.”
Photographed in the Paul Kasmin Gallery, NYC as part of the Indoor Outdoor Exhibit in 2013.
Liquid Gold Cabinet Shown Here with the Arctic Raft Side Table to the Left
Pliniana Armchair and Bundle of Sticks Table By Mattia Bonetti (All Photos By Gail)
Continuing with it recent series of amazing art exhibits, Paul Kasmin Gallery on Tenth Avenue is currently hosting Indoor | Outdoor, an exhibition of new functional sculptures by Mattia Bonetti, on view through May 4th, 2013. If you love the space where Modern Furniture Design becomes Fine Art, this is a Must See exhibit!
Liquid Gold Cabinet
The works in this series epitomize Bonetti’s unique vision, including an exciting debut of new outdoor furniture, a career first for the artist. Since the beginning of his pioneering practice in the 1970s, Bonetti, known for his limited edition works and unique commissions, has approached the distinction between art and design not as a barrier, but as a wellspring of creative dialogue.
Archetype Table Lamp
Lucky Side Table
Inspired by the dynamic between indoors and out, these works swing both conceptually and formally between the organic and the geometric, playing in the space between the natural and the crafted. Blurring these familiar boundaries, the majority of the works have been designed to thrive both inside and outside.
Necklace Round Side Table
Bonetti’s forms also consciously reinvigorate classical and timeless silhouettes, suggesting cultural influences as diverse as Ancient Greece and imperial India. From the patterns of woven reeds translated in bronze, to shaped travertine filled with colored resin, to illuminated Madagascar rock crystal, to cast aluminum that bears the raised grain of hand-milled elm—these works tantalizingly combine and reimagine the world of design into a realm of dueling materials, forms, and evocations.
Travertine Couch and Table
Mattia Bonetti’s Indoor | Outdoorwill be on Exhibit Through May 4th, 2013 at Paul Kasmin Gallery, Located at 293 Tenth Avenue (at West 27th Street) New York, in the Chelsea Gallery District.
Rocky Side Table (Rear) with Oval Meander Coffee Table (Foreground)
