furniture designer. - alirobinson.com€¦ · vitrine: clarendon 10 ali robinson he experimented in...

Furniture designer.

WWW.ALIROBINSON.COMMADE IN LONDON, UK

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Kynance Cove, Cor nwall Working with Special ist Makers T he col lect ion: KynanceAt work with: Ali Robinson

“Ali Robinson’s work is informed by a variety of influences:

the creative polymath studied fine art, before setting up the

architecture and interior design firm Robinson van Noort with his

wife in 2001. Their studio flourished, becoming known for its period

interiors with contemporary touches. Robinson’s first foray into

furniture is no different.”

Holly Patrick - Wallpaper*

“Ali Robinson, one-time rackets world doubles champion-turned-

designer, has served an ace.”

Nathalie Wilson - The World of Interiors

AT WORK WITH:

Ali Robinson

In 2001 Ali Robinson co-founded Robinson van Noort, an architectural and interior design practice. He studied Fine Art at The Ruskin, Oxford University. He predominately made paintings before taking up a number of artist-in-residency posts where his work developed into performance, installation-based sculpture and video. Ali’s practice as a designer and artist has always involved a fundamental connection and fascination in games. He is a gifted sportsman having played a number of games to national level and becoming World Rackets Doubles Champion in 2005.

His art in particular touches on his interest in how sport can be a powerful metaphor, how it can prepare us for all sorts of challenges, financial and socio-political and how practice and rehearsal readies us for performances. It is this unusual mix of love and interest in design, art and games that influences his first collection of furniture, Kynance, launched in 2017. The 17-piece collection comprises of a series of vitrines and tables, along with a selection of mirrors and consoles, a sideboard and a family ruler that records the height of growing children.

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Ali’s furniture collection Kynance, named after a picturesque bay in Cornwall where the designer spent many of his childhood summers, is as much inspired by his early life as an artist as by his years designing bespoke furniture for Robinson van Noort’s residential clients.

Through his work at Robinson van Noort, Ali has spent more than 15 years nurturing relationships with specialist makers around the UK, from cabinetmakers to glass and metal manufacturers. Ali has created the furniture collection with these specialists working in timber, brass, bronze, patinated steel and vitreous enamel. It is this part of the design and making process that gives Ali the most pleasure, where designer and maker allow time to experiment, test and push standard practices and processes together.

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KYNANCE COVE

Cor nwall

WORKING WITH:

Specialist Makers

1608 26 32

TablesVitrines Consoles Other i tems

KYNANCE

Vitrines

‘The Hare with the Amber Eyes – a Hidden Inheritance’, by Edmund de Waal is a tragic story that centres on an object of desire and keepsake; it touches on love, pleasure and exquisite craftsmanship. It describes the glazed cabinets that housed Japanese netsukes or keepsakes that moved around the world from owner to owner over the last 200 years. It made him consider how people spent their time discovering, sourcing, owning, inheriting and cherishing artefacts, and how the examination of the making process itself would affect their opinions on how they value and measure things.

Ali first began using the patinated steel with his vitrine series. The idea for the vitrines came from reading ‘The Hare with the Amber Eyes – A Hidden Inheritance’, by Edmund de Waal.

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VITRINE:

Clarendon

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He experimented in the workshop with the patination of many types of metals, polishing and dipping, and worked with enamel specialists to mix unusual portions of pigment to achieve a delicate ceramic-like surface quality. The process involved balancing a desire to maintain a handmade feel with subtle imperfections, notches and variable patination in the metalwork, with the functional necessities to produce a simple, elegant piece that could be used daily.

Ali studied a variety of vitrines and enjoyed looking at the play of light through the glass and the reflections that bounced off polished surfaces and through perforated metal.

2700 W 430 D 2000 H

800 W 500 D 2200 H

patinated black steel/

perforated metal/

highly polished steel/

glass/

sprayed metal/


perforated metal/


glass/

VITRINE:

Ashorne

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VITRINE:

Symonds960 W 430 D 2250 H


perforated metal/


glass/

sprayed metal/

700 W 430 D 1950 H


perforated metal/


glass/

sprayed metal/

VITRINE:

Barnsbury

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BESPOKE

Vitrines

All of the 4 vitrines can be specified in bespoke sizes and colourways.

2700W 430D 2000H

800W 500D 2200H

960W 430D 2250H

700W 430D 1950H

Clarendon - Double Vitrine

Ashor ne - Vitrine

Symonds - Vitrine

Bar nsbur y - Vitrine

Vitrines

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Dining Tables

Ali has designed two dining tables – Kynance, which is fixed, and Chilworth, which is extendable. The form of the dining table is inspired by Finn Juhl’s Judas Table (1948) with its pared back celebration of rosewood and gentle touch of silver decoration.

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DINING TABLE:

Chilworth

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2550/3550 W 950/1200 D 750 H

smoked eucalyptus veneer or quarter sawn figured sycamore

or dyed tulip wood/

brass or bronze or blackened brass inner and outer ellipse rim/

patinated molten brass legs/

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Chilworth was conceived from a commission to design an extending dining table to seat 14. The relative tightness of the space led Ali to conceive an elliptical design with a brass rim. An inner ellipse creates a table for intimate dining and a larger ellipse, made from 4 extendable leaves, creates a table that can seat 14. These two different shaped ellipses produce a foreshortening depending on where you sit and creates beautiful negative spaces between the inner and outer rim.

DINING TABLE:

Kynance2000/2300/2600/3550 W 950/1000/1050/1200 D 750 H 4200 W 1200 D 750 H


or dyed tulip wood/




or dyed tulip wood/



CONFERENCE TABLE:

Preshute

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Preshute is a revision of Chilworth, Ali’s extendable dining table. The elliptical form was stretched to 4.2 meters and the ends altered to accommodate extra space for laptops and notepads. Furthermore the table was adapted to encompass cable management requirements with an IT undercarriage and two gullwing-like surface grommets.

One of Robinson van Noort’s existing corporate clients requested a number of conference and meeting tables in both smoked eucalyptus and sycamore.

DINING TABLE:

Kynance II

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2000/2300/2600/3550 W 950/1000/1050/1200 D 750 H

dyed tulip wood veneer/

blackened brass rim and discs/

patinated steel legs/

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Kynance II was inspired by a very particular dyed tulip wood. When combined with blackened brass details, the timber takes on a feeling of fossilised stone or patinated metal, evident into rest of his collection. The legs are over-sailing rectangles arranged to form a hexagonal shape. The intersection of the legs align with the blackened brass discs. They create a sweeping helical form which plays with the adjacent and similar looking natural dark knots evident within the veneer.

2000/2300/2600/3550W

950/1000/1050/1200D

750H

2550/3550W 950/1200D 750H

4200W 1200D 750HKynance - Dining TableKynance II - Dining Table

Chilworth - Dining Table

Preshute - Conference Table

Tables

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Consoles

Ali’s consoles looks at how a form can be both symmetrical and cockeyed to suggest a precarious stability. The Lillian console exaggerates this cockeyedness by expressing the leg arrangement position on the marble top with inlaid pewter discs. As with his dining table, Kynance II, this continues Ali’s interests in how inlaid marks can accentuate knots and subtle variations in natural materials and how the hand-made, with its gentle ‘imperfections’, can highlight both the beauty of the material and the skill and ambition of the making.

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1700 W 300 D 690 H1640 W 330 D 790 H

honed nero marquina marble top/

pewter disc/


smoked eucalyptus veneer with brass rim/

or quarter sawn figured sycamore veneer with bronze rim/


CONSOLE:

Tranquil Vale

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CONSOLE:

Lillian

BESPOKE

Consoles

All consoles can be specified in bespoke sizes.

1700W 300D 690H1640W 330D 790H

Tranquil Vale - ConsoleLil l ian - Console

Consoles

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A system of dowels housed through perforated powder coated metal fins, easily adjusted to display all sorts of objects of varying sizes.

These shelves have been used to display books in receptions, glassware and crockery in kitchens (by locating a foreword dowel on a higher row than the others, one secures precious objects) and as a bathroom vanity unit. The steel fins can be coated in any RAL colour and the timber dowels come in ash, walnut or sycamore.

sprayed metal fins/

ash, walnut or sycamore dowels/

SHELVING UNIT:

Twyford

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BESPOKE

Twyford - Shelving unit

Both shelving units can be specified in bespoke sizes and colourways.

800/1000 W 250 D 2400/1120 H

RULER:

Constantine

The colour gradation in the ruler, to mark increments of height, is achieved by altering the time the brass is submerged in the patination tank. The Constantine ruler comes with a bespoke etching stylus for marking heights and recording a child’s name and age and a discreet wall bracket to secure away from the skirting board.

Traditionally the height of growing children is measured on a door frame or wall. However, this presents a problem should a family move house. To solve this problem, Ali has created the Constantine measuring ruler as an elegant way to record the height of growing children.

patinated brass/

150 W 50 D 2250 H

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MIRROR:

Harrow Fields

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600 or 750 Ø

bronze and brass/

or patinated steel and brass/

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Harrow Fields has four hanging positions and is also available in patinated steel and brass . The design takes inspiration from Barbara Hepworth’s 1960 piece ‘Oracle’ and Anish Kapoor’s void pigment sculptures where one is unsure where a form starts and finishes.

Ali’s love of 18th century convex tarnished silvered mirrors led to the creation of Harrow Fields, a dramatic brass and bronze mirror, made from a series of spun, cut and welded concave and convex discs with a flat polished brass ‘mirror’ element.

SIDEBOARD:

Bushey Hill

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1800 W 465 D 850 H


perforated metal/


glass/

sprayed metal/

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Ali is interested in designing objects that seems, on initial viewing, clean and orthogonal but on closer observation have subtle asymmetries and surprising variations. By presenting different planes to frame reflective, perforated or matt surfaces, they gently distort visual perception and encourage verification by touch and close up inspection. Using a ‘palette’ of perforated, patinated, polished and sprayed steel, the sideboard follows on from Ali’s vitrine series - functional, useful and pleasing on the eye. Small cylindrical brass knobs fix through the sliding doors - a functional necessity that highlights the perforated steel’s materiality.

STOOL:

Drove Acre

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880 W 530 D 450 H

brushed stainless steel/

black unlacquered rubber squash balls/

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As a separate, on going practice Ali has made paintings and sculptures since graduating from the Ruskin School of Art.

This sculpture-cum-stool, although ‘sitting’ outside the Kynance collection, influenced the use of spun discs and perforations in his furniture. It is a conceptual piece that challenges strangers in a public space to engage and share the limited amount of upholstery available (the rubber squash balls) to ensure both people sit comfortably.

150W 50D 2250H

1800W 465D 850H

800/1000W 250D 2400/1120H

600 or 750 Ø

880W 530D 450H

Constantine - Ruler

Bushey Hill - Sideboard

Twyford - Shelving unit

Har row Fields - Mir ror

Drove Acre - Stool

DECORATIVE OBJECTS:

Other items

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