Staff and Students from The Cass join Vivienne Westwood and Tiipoi to showcase at Milan's annual Design Week
Date: 15 April 2015
Furniture students from London Met’s Sir John Cass School of Art, Architecture and Design have partnered with Vivienne Westwood for Milan’s annual design week festival the Salone Internazionale del Mobile.
Alongside jewellery maker Tiipoi, The Cass staff and students will present an exhibition of furniture making, titled Alchemy: Material Obsessions, at the the Vivienne Westwood flagship store in Corso Venezia, Milan for the duration of the festival.
From 14-19 April 2015 Vivienne Westwood will host the site-specific exhibition which explores the magic of making. Partially made and disassembled furnishings will be intertwined with Westwood's clothing collections, mirrors and tableware showing processes rather than simply products.
For this project The Cass students were inspired by the tradition of making, looking at how raw materials are used to create a final object. Alchemy: Material Obsessions looks at the role of the maker during this process of creation, from raw materials to finished object, creating a homage to alchemy. Cass students will host workshops in the courtyard, turning raw materials into finished products.
Tutors and technicians from The Cass will also exhibit individual works including A River Runs Through it / Refuge by ceramic artist and Senior Technician Fred Gatley, a collection of polished bone china bowls which feature fragments collected from the river Thames.
CNC Windsor Chair by furniture designer and Cass teacher William Warren looks at the traditional English Windsor chair and updates the long-established manufacturing technique with CNC machine technology.
Stackers, a chair series by contemporary upholsterer and Cass technician Jude Dennis which takes a playful look at tradition and institution, each chair is upholstered using traditional upholstery techniques and materials but with a contemporary twist that celebrates and subverts the traditional craft skills.
Throughout Milan Design week Jude Dennis will be live in store upholstering a new Stacker chair.
