modern spring 2007

CONTENTS5

modern spring 2007

NILUFAR PROFILE9

Ros Weaver meets our guest editor Nina Yachar whose Milan gallery Nilufar with its classic modern designer furniture and carpets makes its mark in a city synonymous with style

NILUFAR Unless you are a gazelle-like beauty with a shopping budget the size of a third-world country’s debt, you can feel very out of place in the narrow granite-paved streets of Milan’s fashion district. But Nina Yachar is not someone you could imagine would ever feel daunted. In fact you rather get the feeling that her neighbours at Prada, Dolce & Gabbana, Missoni etc. are more likely to feel overshadowed by her presence. Yachar’s Nilufar gallery oozes the kind of style that, rather than following trends, inspiresthem. Fabulously-heeled shoppers pause outside to admire the eclectic collection of 20th century and contemporary furniture and carpets put together in a way that is at once zany and utterly tasteful. Yachar came to Italy from Tehran as a fiveyear-old and followed in her father’s footsteps, opening her first shop selling oriental rugs in Milan in the 1970s. But by the 1990s the market for these was in decline. “So I introduced furniture. It would have been hard to survive just by selling carpets. My work is based around my displays, creating atmospheres where the furniture supports the carpet and vice versa. People are more confident about carpets when they can see how they can hold together a decorativescheme.” These days her client base is international, numbering American, British and Chinese collectors alongside the stylish Milanese. Yet Yachar’s first love is the product of her homeland. “I am rarely impressed by the knotting and finish of contemporary Nepalese carpets. The only ones I like are Iranian,” she admits. “It’s the hardest production to control because the weavers have a mind of their own and don’t like following precise designs.” So she commissions rugs to be made in Iranian villages where “People have a certain pride.

These are much to commercialise because they are not produced in high quantity.” For this year’s Salone del Mobile Yachar is showing rugs designed in part by American Haynes Robinson and in part by their Iranian weavers. Juxtaposing these, in typical Nilufar style, will be contemporary hammered aluminium furniture by Israeli sculptor Harush Shlomo and lamps by Chinese design consortium XYZ Design, with ‘Corset’ shades covered in lace and dripping with jade beads. A suitable tribute to the world of fashion.

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Top: Nilufar gallery in

Milan, showing Olga Fisch’s Folklorecarpet, Equador, 1950s Above left: Target carpet, Verner Panton,

circa 1970

Above Right: Nilufar’s window display on via della Spiga, Milan

High Drama Petra Blaisse is commanding attention with her unusual approach to textile design. FionaMacdonald finds out why the inside is turning out

Scaffolding sheets; truck plastic; sailing cloth – they may not be the first choice for nosey neighbours,but these are all materials Dutch designer Petra Blaisse has used to create curtains.The 51-year-old,who named her Amsterdam-based design practice Inside Outside,tends to turn things on their head:as well as reinventing the humble window covering, she has uprooted the garden and blurred the

distinction between interior and exterior.“I am fascinated by the boundary between inside and outside,”she says.“The curtain is often a form oftransmission from one to the other:open the window and the garden comes in,the curtain comes out.” Yet she’s not just dealing with bedroom windows and small patios.Blaisse first gained international acclaim with her golden theatre curtain for the Nederlands Dans Theater in The Hague,

her vast stage curtains for the Grand Palais conference hall in Lille and her spiralling ‘sound curtain’for the Kunsthal in Rotterdam.She has since developed textiles and landscapes in projects with architects such as Rem Koolhaas’s Office for

Photo: P hil Meech

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‘‘‘‘

The curtain is a form of transmission from one to the other:open the window and the garden comes in, the curtain comes out

Petra Blaisse

Photo:Inside Outside

66DESIGN SCHOOLSEINDHOVEN

modernspring 2007

modern spring2007

DESIGN SCHOOLSEINDHOVEN67

92MARKET PLACEFASHION AND FURNISHING

modernspring 2007

Soft Touch The Design Academy Eindhoven is producing dynamic graduates who are breaking the modernist mould, and the design world can’t get enough of them, writes Tom Greatrex

Photo: R obaard/Therwkens

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Photo: R uy Teixeira

You might not know it, but anyone who regularly

reads the design press will certainly be well aware ofthe work (ifnot the names) ofthe graduates ofthe Design Academy Eindhoven.Its roll call ofalumni and teaching staff reads like the Who’s Whoofthe international design scene. The New York Times recently placed the Academy at the top ofdesign education worldwide,while the professional design and architectural mag Icon placed it as the only educational

institute in its recent Top 10 of‘Who and what matters in design worldwide today’. If anything else, over the last ten years it has become responsible for, and synonymous with, consumers re-engaging with the decorative arts – something that brands and services in this sector should be thankful for. As Emily Campbell,head ofdesign and architecture at the British Council (which has worked with Einhoven graduates

such as Tord Boontje) points out: “Decorative is the important word. Their sensibilities heralded a sort of rapprochement with decoration and reference that Modernist design had spurned.Decoration has a very natural allure;it has a comforting referentiality and sensual loveliness that a matt black box can’t claim.Ofcourse consumers like

that kind ofthing.”

Specifically, says Campbell “Eindhoven’s ‘Man and Humanity’programme was a coherent, vigorous and wellcommunicated initiative at a time when the need for design in the developing world was acutely felt.At the same time Eindhoven seemed to nurture designers with the exquisite

ability to integrate the archetypical, decorative or patina’d

with the modern.Bey and Boontje are good examples.” Who can forget the fine cupboards,tables and chairs Piet Hein Eek fashioned from ‘waste’timber? Or the tree-trunk to which Jurgen Bey affixed antique chair backs to form an unusual contemporary bench? Or his ‘Cocoon’series,in which old furniture was given new life with a second skin ofmodern synthetic materials. Bey’s conceptual products now feature

in museums worldwide including New York’s MOMA. Meanwhile, practically every international magazine covering the field has featured Hella Jongerius’striking vases with their elegant tracery,bottles ofglass,ceramics and tape andher porcelain tableware featuring traditional and modern patterns.Hella began producing these articles a decade ago, and has since inspired countless young designers to combine

traditional crafts with hi-tech production methods. Tord Boontje, a Design Academy Eindhoven student during the 1990s who now lectures at London’s Royal College ofArt,reached an international audience with his decorative lamps with floral swags. According to the recent British Council exhibition ‘Import Export’:“His luxurious,glittering

Blossumchandeliers for Swarovski and his festooned,photo

etched metal Garland lights for Habitat have spearheaded a new wave of interest in decorative design. Boontje’s Wednesday Collection,exploring fairytale images offlowers, leaves, birds and animals, encompasses everything from furniture,lighting and glassware to wall coverings,laser-cut

Facing page:

Above: Urn vase, Hella

Jongerius,for Droog, 1993. Soft polyurethane, 21 x 23cm. Image concept: Marjo Kranenborg Below left:

Cappellini Crochet Chair, Marcel

Wanders for Droog, 1996

Below right: Crochet Chair, Marcel Wanders, 2006 This page: Above left: Little Flowers

Falling, curtain/screen, Tord

Boontje for Moroso, 2005.

Laser-cut microfibre Above right: The Beauty of the Insignificant, Anne-Marie Piscaer, student of the Design Academy Eindhoven

INVASION OF THE FASHIONISTAS A marriage made in heaven or mere commercial opportunism? Matthew Bournelooks at the relationship between the big players of the fashion world and the interior design market

Since the days of Coco Chanel, fashion houses have been extremely successful at positioning themselves in the minds of the public as the pre-eminent arbiters and purveyors of all that is stylish and desirable. Increasingly sophisticated

media campaigns have transformed these companies into ‘Lifestyle’ brands whose message now holds sway over an increasingly large area of our lives, reinforced by the ringing endorsements of some of our greatest public institutions, from the Guggenheim in

New York to the V&A in London. The licensing of fashion designs to specialistcompanies has become established practice, often bringing extremely successful results as creative vision is allied to technical know-how. I have personal experience of this,

having developed rugs with fashion designers on several occasions. The dialogue involved

has always been one of mutual respect: we as specialist producers have been committed to realising the creative vision, while the designers have fully grasped the strengths and weaknesses of the techniques involved. What is relatively new however is the trend

for global fashion brands to launch full tilt into the interiors market. Quite a few of them were showing at this year’s Maison et Objet design fair in Paris. Companies such asFendi were much in evidence, their big logo-emblazoned stands proclaiming “We are the major players

in this sector”. Except they are not. Anyone involved as a specialist in the interior textile market can only look on with increasing cynicism as yet another high profile figure from the fashion world launchesyet another line of fabrics, rugs, accessories etc. Perhaps

it’s time to take a step back and tryto analyse what, precisely, motivates these often huge

Above:

Fleurycarpet (detail), Missoni www.missonihome.com

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Editorial 7 Introducing Nina Yachar, Guest Editor for this special Milan Salone del Mobile issue 9 Profile:Nina Yachar of Nilufar gallery, Milan

News & Events 11 News: New Moooi boutique inLondon, Jack Lenor Larsen textile auction, Laura McCafferty and man’s best friend, Fiona Zobole Exhibitions: Indigo, and subversive knitting Books:Sheila Hicks: Weaving as Metaphor and The International Design Yearbook 2007 Fairs:Maison & Objet, Collect, Stockholm and Cologne furniture fairs, ICFF, Domotex and the CDA Awards, Atlanta Area Rug Market

Insight 30 June Swindell’s material world 34 Mixing ancient with modern: Il Mercante

In Situ 41 Geba carpets with religious significance

Features 45 Salone del Mobile: a guide to the best textile offerings this April 49 Six design classics from Nilufar gallery, Milan 54 The story of Lucienne Day, one of the 20th century’s greatest textile designers 60 How Petra Blaisse’s architectural textiles blur the divide between interior and exterior 66 Talent from the elite Design Academy Eindhoven 73 CDAwinners from Domotex 2007

Product Selector 90 Presenting the best-selling rugs of 2006

Market Place 92 Fashion and furnishings: a happy marriage?

Last Page 96 Zoe Miller’s deconstructed textiles