F Taylor Colantonio and Daniel Roseberry create surreal bronze-and-silk furniture for Schiaparelli
Schiaparelli creative director Daniel Roseberry has collaborated with artist F Taylor Colantonio on a collection of sculptural bronze and silk furniture that includes a chair-lamp hybrid.
The starting point for the creative collaboration was the neoclassical theme of the Toilet of Venus, a subject that was popular in the sixteenth century.
The Schiaparelli collection includes a daybed and a set of chairs, which feature an integrated lamp, and is produced to order.
The pieces were made from raw, unpatinated bronze and have been upholstered in silk embroidery.
The bronze was cast in Italy using the lost wax technique, a method that involves creating a replica of the sculpture in plaster or clay to make a soft mould into which molten wax is poured.
The wax is then removed from the mould and placed within a ceramic shell inside a kiln. As the wax melts, bronze is poured into the shell, taking the form of the lost wax.
The daybed, named One Long as Twenty, derives its name from an excerpt from a Shakespeare poem about the love story of Venus and Adonis.
The corded-silk embroidery with gilded-leather applique was designed by Roseberry.
The embroidery features two figures, referencing two wooden mannequins named Pascal and Pascaline, the unofficial mascots of the brand which founder Elsa Schiaparelli had married to each other in a small wedding ceremony.
"I think it's fun to immortalise their [Pascal and Pascaline's] love for one another, like Venus and Adonis," said F Taylor Colantonio.
The chair with an integrated lamp was named Throne for Queen-Moon after a line in English poet John Keats’s Ode to a Nightingale: "the moon, the queen of the sky, is sitting on her throne surrounded by her stars".
Like the daybed, the chair was also upholstered in corded-silk embroidery with gilded-leather applique. The electrical cord of the lamp was covered in ruched hand-dyed silk.
The collaboration aims to carry on founder Elsa Schiaparelli's association with artists "to create objects which live between surrealism and functionality, and blur the boundaries of art, design, and haute couture".
"I loved working with F Taylor Colantonio, whose work I have been admiring for years, to create something out of our common interests for mythology and a certain theatricality that still bears the Schiaparelli imprint," said Roseberry.
French haute couture house Schiaparelli was founded in 1927. The house's collection of couture gowns decorated with hyper-realistic taxidermied bodies of wild animals featured in Dezeen's top 10 fashion moments of 2023.
Photography courtesy of Schiaparelli and F Taylor Colantonio.
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