Baroque and roll: for Craft Alchemy, Fendi’s latest design adventure at this year’s Design Miami, the venerable Roman fashion house has teamed up with designer Elisa Strozyk and artist Sebastian Neeb to create some elaborate leather furniture sculptures.
The pieces, which will go on show in an installation at Design Miami this week, were created by the artists out of discarded pieces of Fendi leather, and are intended to imitate highly-wrought 18th century cabinets, taking cues from the Neo-Classical architecture of the Palazzo Fendi in Rome. Each work demonstrates intricate handcrafting techniques, continuing Fendi’s commitment to exploring the best of contemporary craftsmanship, and incorporates familiar motifs of Strozyk’s solo work – flexible wooden textiles, unexpected shapes and a tension between the brittle and pliable.
Craft Alchemy is the latest in a series of Fendi projects that have intertwined the worlds of fashion and design, following 2009’s Craft Punk (in which designers created leather works in front of a live audience), and 2010’s Modern Primitives (in which architects Aranda Lasch created a range of furniture that was draped with Fendi furs).
Above we present a series of images that show the fabrication process of the Strozyk and Neeb’s Craft Alchemy creations, as well as the finished pieces. For further work visit their own sites on the links below.