Futuristic Designs: The Charles Burnand Gallery at PAD London
Furniture made from lunar lava is only one of the stars of this show.
Boulder Low Table by Deglan. Courtesy of Charles Burnand Gallery.
How would you like to have a side table carved out of moon rock? You don’t need to become an astronaut to bring some outer-space flair to your interior—just head to the booth of Charles Burnand Gallery, which launches its first presentation at collectible design fair PAD London this year.
“Our theme for PAD is ‘Spectral Landscapes: The Fusion of Organic and Futuristic Design,’” says Simon Stewart, founder of Charles Burnand, a gallery that has been representing established and emerging design talents in London’s Fitzrovia since 2009. “I like to think that this is an innovative exhibition that seamlessly blends the natural with the avant-garde, creating a captivating dialogue between organic forms and futuristic aesthetics.”
Furniture made from lunar lava is only one of the stars of this show. The pockmarked material resembling mineral ore—from which tables, stools, and one-off vessels are hewn—is the tongue-in-cheek brainchild of London-based Studio Furthermore, founded by artists Marina Dragomirova and Iain Howlett. Their objects are actually made of recycled aluminum sourced from discarded car wheels, and the cratered-surface effect comes from using a technique known as lost-foam casting—no rocketships required.
Untitled by Heechan Kim. Photo by Yi Hsuan Lai, courtesy of Charles Burnand Gallery.
Untitled by Heechan Kim. Photo by Yi Hsuan Lai, courtesy of Charles Burnand Gallery.
“In a world where we now have to be even more conscious of our impact on the globe, the innovation that Studio Furthermore adopts to create exceptional works has to be the future,” sStewart says. “This is upcycling and recycling at the most sustainable and innovative level.” Next year, he reveals, “their Moon Rock project will be permanently installed on the moon with the Moon Gallery in collaboration with the European Space Agency.”
Elsewhere in the Charles Burnand booth, find honest, earthly materials such as wood, stone, metal, and glass manipulated and polished into objects of otherworldly elegance. New York–based Heechan Kim takes cues from boatbuilding to bend thin slices of ash, which he weaves together with wire to create curved forms that resemble hives or shells. From Melbourne, DenHolm, the multidisciplinary studio run by Steven John Clark, offers hand-sculpted limestone furniture that exudes a warm, self-effacing, and jovial mood, such as a coffee table in the shape of a KitKat chocolate bar.
Seoul-born artist Kyeok Kim, a 2021 finalist for the prestigious Loewe Craft Prize, crochets and lacquers copper wire to create fine sculptures that resemble shedded skin, and London-based, Baltimore-born artist Dawn Bendick stacks hunks of cast glass in hues such as acid yellow, ultraviolet, and fuschia to make visionary totemic sculptures that shift in colour as they interact with natural or artificial light.
Second surface by Kyeok Kim. Courtesy of Charles Burnand Gallery.
Other artists showing available works at the fair include Berlin-based Deglan (the practice of duo Domenic Degner and Falko Landenberger), whose table designs are inspired by boulders and pebbles; Antwerp-based Arno Declercq, whose brutalist furniture is carefully charred and oiled to a deep, inky black; London-based Yanxiong Lin, whose sculptural designs are made exclusively with wood, washi paper, and urushi lacquer; and San Juan–based Reynold Rodriguez, who transforms plaster and salvaged wood into emotional objects imbued with personal and political history.
“Each artist and studio in this exhibition presents a unique interpretation of the intersection between the organic and the futuristic, using their distinct design languages to explore this dynamic fusion,” Stewart says. “I felt that it was important to show exceptional works by artists that the PAD audience weren’t familiar with in order to bring a new perspective to the collectible design scene.” Charles Burnand’s stellar presentation reminds us that supernatural beauty can often be found close to home, if you just know where and how to look.
From October 8 to 13, design connoisseurs leap to PAD London, the international design fair poised to launch its 16th edition. Over the next 10 weeks, NUVO shines a spotlight on the fair’s roster of talented newcomers, many of whom are local to London, and identifies the artists and exhibitors who should be on every visitor’s radar.
