I am surrounded by an army of black paper ants, which appear to be picking away pieces of Manami Hayasaki’s intricate cutout scenes. Amongst fairytale trees sprouting sinister hands as roots, wary-looking animals, dragonflies and feisty stag beeles, the ants scatter across the gallery walls carrying off their loot.
Project B (2009)
Luke Jerram’s biomedical glass pieces are objects of beauty despite their unsavoury subject matter. Based on microscopic images of killer viruses, he worked with skilled glass blowers and Bristol University virologists, to create a series of translucent interpretations of these commonly feared diseases.
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‘Craft’ is a loaded term, often negatively associated with village fete knitted tea-cosies, knick-knacks or brown lumpy pottery. Wandering around Design Miami’s ‘Craft Punk’ exhibition at Spazio Fendi, it is refreshing to see a revival of interest in the idea of craft as a skilled creative discipline involving intricate knowledge of materials and hand-manufacturing techniques.
For the Salone week, Spazio Fendi has been converted into a buzzing hive of noise and activity, a performance space with young designers creating craft-based products in makeshift open studios.
In one corner you step into a cluttered leather workshop, with Simon Hasan’s bubbling pots and steaming tea-urns boiling leather ready to be converted into vases and stools. Hasan revives a forgotten technique, Cuir Bouilli, used in medieval times to make armour and drinking bottles. He twists and stretches the boiled leather over vase-shaped formers, using Fendi’s wooden shoe lasts, bits of scaffolding and other oddments to create curious but beautiful vessels. The leather hardens irreversibly, holding its shape, and is then hand-stitched and sealed with resin, resulting in functional vases suitable to hold water. As a performance, it is fascinating to see the transformation from a soft, shapeless sheet of hide to a rock hard three-dimensional product.
Peter Marigold also works in leather, using a box of miscellaneous off-cuts and scraps from Fendi’s studio to produce a meandering crazy-paving table. Growing every day, the tessellating tabletop sprawls across the space with contrasting flashes of colour and finishes - silvery snakeskin, hot pink and electric blue.
Other highlights to spot were Kwangho Lee’s knitted hosepipe chairs and Studio Glithero’s photo-sensitive ceramic vases, slowly rotating in front of a spotlight to produce ghostly patterns.
No hint of crocheted toilet-roll covers here.
Craft Punk
Spazio Fendi
Via Sciesa 3
Words and images: Tamsin van Essen
Down a nondescript side street in the centre of Zona Torntona, a golden robot greets you into the crazy metal workshop Traviganti. A shiny tangle of doily-like filigree and oversized wonderland objects: giant gold-plated coffee pots, running horses, egg-shaped urns, and other fanciful creations wrought in brass, aluminium and silver by slightly bemused looking artisans. It is a surprise to find this warren of dusty machinery, skilled craftsmanship and ancient techniques, apparently ignoring passing design trends. But the main pull is the blue-eyed trundling robotic waitress Caterina, who follows you round the factory floor in a disconcertingly addictive way.
Carlo Traviganti di Riccardo
LavorazioneArtistica Metallo
Via Novi 5/7
Words & image: Tamsin van Essen
