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New home furniture assortment celebrates Vladimir Kagan
Curated by Vladimir Kagan Style Group director Chris Eitel, in collaboration with Holly Hunt, the household furniture selection provides 10 pieces developed by Kagan among the 1940s and 1980s, discovering the critical themes of his perform
Holly Hunt and Vladimir Kagan Design and style Group present a new 10-piece collection of furniture patterns by the late designer Vladimir Kagan, checking out the recurring themes of his perform concerning the 1940s and 1980s. Curated by Chris Eitel, director of layout and manufacturing at Vladimir Kagan Design and style Team (and former protégé of the late designer), the collection capabilities devoted copy, preserving the designer’s legacy with minimal useful or materials adjustments.
Eitel joined Kagan’s studio in 2013 and, more than the several years, he worked carefully with the designer to enable create some of his restricted-edition items, for the likes of Ralph Pucci and Carpenters Workshop Gallery. The selection of home furnishings reissues displays some of the important themes recurring all through Kagan’s function, with a aim on natural sorts and linear architecture.
Vladimir Kagan furnishings rediscovered
‘Biscuit’ couch and ‘Branch’ espresso desk
‘We started out by going through [Kagan’s] Classic Selection,’ says Eitel, referring to a substantial human body of household furniture perform comprising sofas, chairs, tables and lights, aspect of the layout studio’s ongoing production. ‘We began revisiting all the parts and the way that our craftsmen ended up generating them in the woodshop. [It] really helped me search at additional historic items from unique decades.’
With each other, the items in the collection sort a map of Kagan’s visible inspirations and the artistic movements that educated his work, but by their materiality and sorts they also advise a visual heritage of household furniture style. The 1950s ‘Upsilon’ coffee desk bears components of midcentury present day furnishings design, even though the ‘Roll Back’ couch, from 1967, introduces Lucite in mix with minimally shaped upholstered things. The 1970s ‘Ellipse’ lounge chair, with its round steel base and ruched seat upholstered in blue velvet, and the Lucite ‘Lotus’ chair are imbued with a refined disco spirit, though the composition of the 1980s ‘In-Flight’ side tables was a reference to postmodernism.
Chris Eitel posing on the ‘Barrel’ sofa in the furniture workshop
There is plenty of modularity through the collection, like in the snake-like kinds of the ‘Biscuit’ sofa, and references to cubism, found in the composition of the ‘Cantilevered’ desk that exquisitely combines glass, metal and wood. ‘Vladimir would often say he had two kinds: an organic, curved model and a single a lot more architectural and linear,’ notes Eitel. ‘We felt like we have been telling a great deal [about] the organic [in the Classic Collection], and not ample [about] those linear patterns that he developed all through unique decades.
‘We needed to just investigate his occupation a small little bit and pull from decades, see what his influences ended up from the 1940s by way of the 1980s, obtain some pieces that folks may not have experienced accessibility to for a long time, and decide on issues that we had been attracted to, and that we assumed we could provide ahead in a up to date and modern day way.’
The selection was produced in collaboration with furniture company Holly Hunt, which acquired the studio in 2016 and has considering the fact that been supporting its function. ‘Vladimir Kagan’s do the job embodies a lifelong perseverance to the handcrafted and beautiful,’ claims Jo Annah Kornak, SVP and executive inventive director at Holly Hunt. ‘[We are] honoured to go on that legacy, and operate with Chris and the Vladimir Kagan Layout Studio to develop heirloom pieces that respond to the switching present day environment.’
When requested to decide a single piece from the collection, Eitel is hesitant. ‘I definitely imagine there isn’t just one piece that defines Vladimir’s vision,’ he states. ‘I consider what you are seeing is a scope of eyesight that he experienced, by bringing the archive parts again, we continuing a vision of the corporation and studio and exhibiting its evolution. The parts in the collection clearly show the heritage of Vladimir Kagan by way of style.’ §