Blog Archives

Dezeen October 2017

The  Fonteyn Chair

Edition of 8 + 2 AP

Material: Verde Guatemala Marble and Burr Oak Veneer

Size: L60cm x W80cm x H70cm

Brooksbank & Collins’ Fonteyn Chair is named in honour of the celebrated ballet dancer Dame Margot Fonteyn 1919-1991, who together with her dance partner Rudolf Khametovich Nureyev 1938-1993 mesmerized audiences around the world with their performances of extraordinary grace and athleticism.

The Fonteyn Chair explores the relationship between two separate but interdependent bodies, the seat of the Fonteyn Chair is resolutely athletic, it’s weight shifted and in motion, it holds its back panel partner in a daring but perfect lift, the two bodies dancing in dynamic equilibrium. The athleticism of the seat is achieved through the use of a single block of Verde Guatemala marble giving it weight and strength. Book-matched Burr Oak veneer is used to construct the back panel, the flamboyant display of burring completes the performance.

The two bodies of The Fonteyn Chair cover very different but equally great epochs in time. The Verde Guatemala Marble quarried in India formed millions of years ago. The Oak Tree from which the veneer originates grew in a cattle pasture on a large English Estate in the Cotswold Hills. The tree lived for at least 825 years, growing as a sapling around the year 1250. Combined, the two materials span geological time and great changes in our civilization.

For all sales and press enquires please contact Gallery Fumi

The Do-Rey Unit

Material: Silicon Rubber

Size:

Unit 1: L10.1 x W5.6 x H0.2cm

Unit 2: L29.5 x W28.5 x H0.2cm

Unit 3: L49.1 x W45.4 x H0.2cm

Brooksbank & Collins’ Do-Rey is an exercise exploring growth and self-similarity, inspired by the work of Benoit B. Mandelbrot 1924 – 2010, a Polish-born mathematician. Within the overall shape of Do-Rey there lies a repetitive pattern that can be divided down into smaller and smaller sections.

Do-Rey is a universal form found in nature and is also a form used for human’s most advanced technology. The hexagonal pattern is used for the mirror for the James Webb Space Telescope: a Space Observatory due to launch in 2018 which will expand our knowledge and understanding of the universe.

Do-Rey is a universe within itself, it can grow in a regular pattern or it can grow chaotically dependent on conditions.

Do-Rey can be used practically as tableware; coaster, placemat, centerpiece and combinations of units can be used to fill the plane of a tabletop.

Photographs by Stephen Lenthall

Daniella on Design / November 2016

Wallpaper Magazine / November 2016

Dezeen / July 2016

Wallpaper Magazine / July 2016

The Kubrick Table

Edition of 8 + 2 AP

Material: Honed Thassos Marble

Size: L140 x W140 x H30cm (Tabletop)

Brooksbank & Collins’ Kubrick Table is named in honour of legendary film director Stanley Kubrick, 1928 – 1999, whose visionary oeuvre includes the science fiction classic 2001: A Space Odyssey.

In their design for the Kubrick Table Tom and Allan have explored their fascination with the visual language of science fiction and in particular Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. The Kubrick table is composed of four individual egg-like spheres intersecting a circular disc. Each of these geometric elements is carved from pure white Thassos marble and, as a whole, the Kubrick table possesses an ethereal glow redolent of a serene white space craft traversing the vastness of space.

Thassos marble is quarried in the beautiful island of Thassos, located in the Northeastern part of Greece. The island derives its name from Thasus, brother of Europa and King of Phoenicians, who settled in the island after Zeus kidnapped his sister, to find solace in the natural beauty of the setting.

For all sales and press enquires please contact Gallery Fumi

Photographs by Stephen Lenthall

Wallpaper Magazine / June 2016

As part of the of the XXI Triennale di Milano International Exposition, Brooksbank & Collins have been invited to exhibit our Me-Far Octo Bowl as part of an exhibition named “Sempering – Process and pattern in architecture and design”.  The exhibition takes place at MUDEC – Museum of Cultures in Milan. The exhibition is curated by Luisa Collina and Cino Zucchi

The exhibition runs from 2 APR – 12 SEP 2016

Mudec – Museo delle Culture
via Tortona 56, Milano

Luisa Collina, Cino Zucchi  with Valentina Auricchio, Simona Galateo 

XXI International Exhibition, Triennale di Milano 2016 

XXI Century. Design after Design 

Sempering 

(zʼɛmpərɪŋ); Engl. present continuous voice of the verb “to semper”. In architecture and design, a constructive action on a material or a compo-nent which leaves a meaningful formal trace in the final product. Neolo-gism from the surname of the German Architect Gottfried Semper, 1803- 1879, author of Der Stil in den technischen und tektonischen Künsten, 1860- 63; see Luisa Collina, Cino Zucchi, Sempering: Tectonics and texture in con-temporary architecture and design practice, XXI Triennale di Milano Interna-tional Exhibition, Catalogue, Milano 2016

Prologue 

“Tectonics is an art which finds its model in nature, not in its concrete mani-festations, but in conformity with its laws (…). The field in which this art fulfils itself is the sensible world; its works exist in space and manifest themselves to our eyes as bodies, through form and color. Tectonics is therefore the real cosmic art; the Greek word cosmos, which has no equivalent in our present languages, defines at the same time the universal order and ornament. Be-tween the creation of tectonic art and the universal laws of nature exists a harmony that represents also its ornament.” 

Gottfried Semper, Theorie des Formell-Schönen 

In 1851, year of the first Universal Exposition in London, the German archi-tect Gottfried Semper writes Die vier Elemente der Baukunst, where he lists the elements of an ideal original dwelling – perhaps suggested to him by the Caribbean hut exhibited in the Crystal Palace – which could be considered

as fundamentals of architectures in all times and places: the fireplace, the roof, the pedestal/platform, and the enclosure.

Several nineteenth-century treatises tried to found architectural discipline on constructive principles common to all civilizations. The originality of Semper is in the use of them to order the variety of the ‘industrial arts’: he relates ce-ramics and metallurgy to the fireplace; hydraulics and masonry to the pedes-tal; carpentry to the roof and its supports; weaving to its partitions. The delim-itation of domestic space by rugs or mattings – rather than by the erection of the masonry structure which sustains them – is conceived by Semper as the primeval action of architecture. To demonstrate this – and struck by the con-sonance between the German word ‘Wand’ (wall) and the verb ‘Gewand’(to weave)- he shows how many historical ornamental motifs cannot be inter-preted if not with a ‘textile’ legacy; while other ones are still divided between a ‘tectonic’ origin (in Semper’s mind, the frame of light bars) and a ‘stere-otomic’ one (the layering of heavy elements), in the long dispute between carpenters and masons, between frame construction (Fachwerk) and mass construction (Mauerwerk).

Contemporaneity and history melt together in his attempt to bring back to well-known categories the phantasmagoria of artifacts exhibited in the large Crystal Palace glasshouse, where Semper -escaped from Dresden after the failure of the uprising for which he designed the barricades – cured the Cana-dian, Danish, Swedish and Ottoman sections.

Update 

A year after Milan’s 2015 EXPO, and more than one hundred and fifty years after the publication of his Der Stil in den technischen und tektonischen Kün-sten, what classification would Gottfried Semper put forward to interpret the number of artifacts that today shape our environment, and that cross the es-tablished borders of any possible ‘system of the arts’, of any separation in competences and sectors in the design of objects, architectures, land-scapes?

In the wider context of the events produced by the XXI Triennale di Milano 2016 International Exposition, the exhibition Sempering, realized in the spac-es of the MUDEC in porta Genova, would like to focus the attention on sev-eral ‘ways of doing’ of contemporary design, without pretending to formalize a complete geography of them and without separating them into disciplinary typologies. A simple concept is at the base of its choices and its arrange-ment: the one of a continuous evolution and revision in time of the relation-ship between means and ends, between ‘methods’ and ‘forms’.

Engineers? Bricoleurs? 

The first Modern, in its reformatory zeal, tried to wipe out every formal para-digm inherited from the past and to set forth the pretended universality of a ‘method’ capable of transforming the gathered data into a design outcome.

The designer dreamt by Modernism strongly resembles the ideal figure of the ‘engineer’ described by Claude Lévi-Strauss in La pensée sauvage (The Savage Mind, 1966): the one who has ‘method’ and not ‘form’, who creates “events through structures”; while his ‘bricoleur’ uses the forms and scraps

he has at hand to solve contingent problems, thus generating “structures through events”.

But Sempering does not employ any ideal figure, any abstract model; it simp-ly distances itself for a moment from the scientific and ‘universalist’ obses-sions of modern design, and brings back the attention on techniques, on practices rooted in concrete history; it tries to survey a contemporary design attitude which unites experimentation and research through the critical revi-sion of the customs, recipes, even of the technical and formal ‘prejudices’ that every shared culture inevitably reveals.

The research on new materials and on technical innovation put forward by modernism appears today to intertwine with the array of the practices that in history unites the natural elements – stone, wood, clay, iron, cotton – with the known and transmitted modes of their selection and employ in combinations that cannot be found in their original state.

Handicraft practices included in their own body fragments of the current artis-tic culture in the ancillary vest of ‘decoration’; but the denial of an imitative dimension leaves to the Modern no other figural device than the one of pat-tern and texture, of the evidence of the joints among the constitutive parts of an object.

Repetition and difference 

Sempering conducts a synthetic rereading of techniques elaborated in specif-ic environments able of generating patterns and forms without suggesting a simple reprise of the ‘past’; rather observing them in their present manifesta-tion, where process and figure still interlace without copying existing formal motifs – a typical action of post-modern culture – from history and from the contexts that generated them.

If modern thought tried to overcome the concept of ‘applied arts’ substituting them with a new culture of industrial production in large series, today indus-trial procedures walk along with the return to handicrafts; the quality of an ob-ject or a building is not undermined by the peculiarities of the execution by hand, and the serial nature of the ‘standard’ product gives way to the adap-tive singularity of the element, be it realized by hand or by sophisticated pro-duction processes.

But it’s not only a matter of execution techniques; this shift implies also a strong revision of the concept of ‘universality’ and ‘mass production’, intend-ed as general principles, capable to found the quality of most design tasks; from this comes the renewed interest on the interrelations between design and process and the recognition in contemporary design culture of a number of recurring modes such as:

– ‘neo-handicraft’ attitudes, with the recovery of manual practices able to yield results which are impossible to achieve with current industrial procedures;

– forms of advanced manufacturing, where sophisticated technologies (including parametric ones) permit to realize unique pieces, once un-reachable;

– new balances between these two opposite modes, in which production in series and handicraft, design and praxis combine in original ways.

4+4=8 

The categories set forth by Gottfried Semper – which did not refer so much to the material itself, but rather to some of its physical properties in their con-frontation with a series of possible manufacturing and assembling it to form complex structures – can today be used as a sort of ‘mnemonic guide’ of compositional modes often born out a specific art or technique and then broadened to respond to diverse situations. The natural material, the tech-niques of its extraction and finishing, and the modalities of its assembly to form bigger wholes form thus a complex triad, a never completely static one. The processes identified by the exhibition Sempering are seen as techniques of assembly and metamorphosis of the elements which compose architecture and design works, but at the same time as archetypes of different patterns which found altogether a sort of contemporary ‘abstract decoration’.

The exhibition lists eight of them, represented by an equivalent number of ac-tions that the mind, the hand or the machine can operate on matter:

_piling up, or the action of the mason;

_weaving, or the action of the basket maker;

_molding, or the action of the founder or of the sculptor;

_connecting, or the action of the carpenter in wood or metal;

_folding, or the action of the tinsmith;

_tiling, or the action of the layer and the assembler of elements;

_stamping /engraving, or the action of the decorator and the carver;

_blowing, or the action of the glassmaker.

Each one of these actions, and its new or well-established formal potentials, will be represented in the exposition through small narrations: different con-tributions (such as historical collections, study prototypes, molds, drawings and actual objects) able to trace their roots and the forms and languages they assumed in contemporary architecture and design.

In its synthetic character, the exposition Sempering would like to show how the most interesting explorations in the fields of architecture, design, land-scape design, public art, can show the forms of a new work attitude able to deal with the environmental challenge with consciousness, empiricism and rigor, recombining known forms and events to form original new works, and revising established behaviors through innovative technologies and process-es; observing the concept of ‘technique’ not any more as a neutral and objec-tive process, but rather as a lively and continuously changing material cul-ture, connected to the larger sphere of human thought and behavior.

Wallpaper Magazine / April 2016

The Me-Far Tribus Vessels

Material: Aluminium; Anodised Finish, Gold Colour

Size: L52 x W49.1 x H16cm (all 8 vessels nesting)

An ancient text which observed the Kimonos worn by the Japanese Samurai captures the spirit of Brooksbank & Collins’ Me-Far Vessels;

“His kimono was restrained in colour – according to the solemnity of his office – but in fine and abundant silk in accordance with his rank and wealth. As he knelt on the tatami mat, the stiff fabric of his sleeves and shoulder garments fell in geometric layers at his sides. The lines enveloping him were poised, considered and restrained, giving a formality and ceremony to his form like a dragon fly resting on a leaf, or a piece of origami.”

The Me-Far series is an analysis of geometry and the sequential numbering of polygons, each set of vessels is one result of that analysis. A great variety of forms emerge from the analysis but there are geometrical limitations leading to a finite series of Me-Far Vessels.

Each set of the vessels can be nested together into a single decorative piece. Alternatively they can be playfully combined in a variety of different ways, each of which creates different geometrical patterns and reflections. Made from Precious and semi-precious metals, Sterling Silver, Gold and Rhodium, Copper and Bronze, the series of Me-Far Vessels uses the most exquisite materials to highlight their forms and the materials surfaces reflect each other in bewildering complexity.

Stockist: FBC London

Photographs by Stephen Lenthall

The Me-Far Quinque Vessels

Material: Aluminium, Anodised Finish, Gold Colour

Size: L43 x W43 x H14.4cm (all 3 vessels nesting)

An ancient text which observed the Kimonos worn by the Japanese Samurai captures the spirit of Brooksbank & Collins’ Me-Far Vessels;

“His kimono was restrained in colour – according to the solemnity of his office – but in fine and abundant silk in accordance with his rank and wealth. As he knelt on the tatami mat, the stiff fabric of his sleeves and shoulder garments fell in geometric layers at his sides. The lines enveloping him were poised, considered and restrained, giving a formality and ceremony to his form like a dragon fly resting on a leaf, or a piece of origami.”

The Me-Far series is an analysis of geometry and the sequential numbering of polygons, each set of vessels is one result of that analysis. A great variety of forms emerge from the analysis but there are geometrical limitations leading to a finite series of Me-Far Vessels.

Each set of the vessels can be nested together into a single decorative piece. Alternatively they can be playfully combined in a variety of different ways, each of which creates different geometrical patterns and reflections. Made from Precious and semi-precious metals, Sterling Silver, Gold and Rhodium, Copper and Bronze, the series of Me-Far Vessels uses the most exquisite materials to highlight their forms and the materials surfaces reflect each other in bewildering complexity.

Stockist: FBC London

Photographs by Stephen Lenthall

The Me-Far Tribus Vessels

Material: Aluminium; Anodised Finish, Warm Rust Colour

Size: L52 x W49.1 x H16cm (all 8 vessels nesting)

An ancient text which observed the Kimonos worn by the Japanese Samurai captures the spirit of Brooksbank & Collins’ Me-Far Vessels;

“His kimono was restrained in colour – according to the solemnity of his office – but in fine and abundant silk in accordance with his rank and wealth. As he knelt on the tatami mat, the stiff fabric of his sleeves and shoulder garments fell in geometric layers at his sides. The lines enveloping him were poised, considered and restrained, giving a formality and ceremony to his form like a dragon fly resting on a leaf, or a piece of origami.”

The Me-Far series is an analysis of geometry and the sequential numbering of polygons, each set of vessels is one result of that analysis. A great variety of forms emerge from the analysis but there are geometrical limitations leading to a finite series of Me-Far Vessels.

Each set of the vessels can be nested together into a single decorative piece. Alternatively they can be playfully combined in a variety of different ways, each of which creates different geometrical patterns and reflections. Made from Precious and semi-precious metals, Sterling Silver, Gold and Rhodium, Copper and Bronze, the series of Me-Far Vessels uses the most exquisite materials to highlight their forms and the materials surfaces reflect each other in bewildering complexity.

Stockist: FBC London

Photographs by Stephen Lenthall

The Me-Far Quinque Vessels

Material: Aluminium, Anodised Finish, Warm Rust Colour

Size: L43 x W43 x H14.4cm (all 3 vessels nesting)

An ancient text which observed the Kimonos worn by the Japanese Samurai captures the spirit of Brooksbank & Collins’ Me-Far Vessels;

“His kimono was restrained in colour – according to the solemnity of his office – but in fine and abundant silk in accordance with his rank and wealth. As he knelt on the tatami mat, the stiff fabric of his sleeves and shoulder garments fell in geometric layers at his sides. The lines enveloping him were poised, considered and restrained, giving a formality and ceremony to his form like a dragon fly resting on a leaf, or a piece of origami.”

The Me-Far series is an analysis of geometry and the sequential numbering of polygons, each set of vessels is one result of that analysis. A great variety of forms emerge from the analysis but there are geometrical limitations leading to a finite series of Me-Far Vessels.

Each set of the vessels can be nested together into a single decorative piece. Alternatively they can be playfully combined in a variety of different ways, each of which creates different geometrical patterns and reflections. Made from Precious and semi-precious metals, Sterling Silver, Gold and Rhodium, Copper and Bronze, the series of Me-Far Vessels uses the most exquisite materials to highlight their forms and the materials surfaces reflect each other in bewildering complexity.

Stockist: FBC London

Photographs by Stephen Lenthall

The Me-Far Tribus Vessels

Material: Aluminium; Anodised Finish, Clear Colour

Size: L52 x W49.1 x H16cm (all 8 vessels nesting)

An ancient text which observed the Kimonos worn by the Japanese Samurai captures the spirit of Brooksbank & Collins’ Me-Far Vessels;

“His kimono was restrained in colour – according to the solemnity of his office – but in fine and abundant silk in accordance with his rank and wealth. As he knelt on the tatami mat, the stiff fabric of his sleeves and shoulder garments fell in geometric layers at his sides. The lines enveloping him were poised, considered and restrained, giving a formality and ceremony to his form like a dragon fly resting on a leaf, or a piece of origami.”

The Me-Far series is an analysis of geometry and the sequential numbering of polygons, each set of vessels is one result of that analysis. A great variety of forms emerge from the analysis but there are geometrical limitations leading to a finite series of Me-Far Vessels.

Each set of the vessels can be nested together into a single decorative piece. Alternatively they can be playfully combined in a variety of different ways, each of which creates different geometrical patterns and reflections. Made from Precious and semi-precious metals, Sterling Silver, Gold and Rhodium, Copper and Bronze, the series of Me-Far Vessels uses the most exquisite materials to highlight their forms and the materials surfaces reflect each other in bewildering complexity.

Stockist: FBC London

Photographs by Stephen Lenthall

The Me-Far Quinque Vessels

Material: Aluminium, Anodised Finish, Clear Colour

Size: L43 x W43 x H14.4cm (all 3 vessels nesting)

An ancient text which observed the Kimonos worn by the Japanese Samurai captures the spirit of Brooksbank & Collins’ Me-Far Vessels;

“His kimono was restrained in colour – according to the solemnity of his office – but in fine and abundant silk in accordance with his rank and wealth. As he knelt on the tatami mat, the stiff fabric of his sleeves and shoulder garments fell in geometric layers at his sides. The lines enveloping him were poised, considered and restrained, giving a formality and ceremony to his form like a dragon fly resting on a leaf, or a piece of origami.”

The Me-Far series is an analysis of geometry and the sequential numbering of polygons, each set of vessels is one result of that analysis. A great variety of forms emerge from the analysis but there are geometrical limitations leading to a finite series of Me-Far Vessels.

Each set of the vessels can be nested together into a single decorative piece. Alternatively they can be playfully combined in a variety of different ways, each of which creates different geometrical patterns and reflections. Made from Precious and semi-precious metals, Sterling Silver, Gold and Rhodium, Copper and Bronze, the series of Me-Far Vessels uses the most exquisite materials to highlight their forms and the materials surfaces reflect each other in bewildering complexity.

Stockist: FBC London

Photographs by Stephen Lenthall

The Triton Chair

Each piece is unique

Material: English Bur Oak with Copper inserts

Size: L40 x W40 x H80cm

Brooksbank & Collins’ Triton chair is named in honor of the planet Neptune’s Moon, Triton. Inspired by the dramatic view of the crescents of Neptune and Triton, acquired by NASA’s Voyager 2 in 1989, the chair’s geometry reflects the relationship of the two stellar bodies.

“The Cosmos is all that is or was or ever will be. Our feeblest contemplations of the Cosmos stir us — there is a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice, a faint sensation, as if a distant memory, of falling from a height. We know we are approaching the greatest of mysteries.”

Carl Edward Sagan, American astronomer, 1934 – 1996

The Triton Chair is composed of 3 panels of naturally fallen book matched English burr Oak; Latin name Quercus macrocarpa is a large deciduous tree and one of the slowest-growing oaks; the tree is a microcosm of the life of the universe.

For all sales & press enquiries please contact Gallery FUMI

Photographs by Stephen Lenthall

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/luxury/design/74788/design-miamibasel-preview.html

Gallery FUMI
London-based Gallery FUMI is among several that will present new pieces commissioned specifically for the fair. Max Lamb’s Metalware takes the lead from the Woodware collection made for FUMI in 2011, and Sam Orlando Miller extends his sculptural mirrors into new dimensions with two new works too. Glithero, Study O Portable, and Lukas Wegwerth have all evolved popular current projects and new duo-on-the-block Brooksbank & Collins will be debuting their Boullee Table – a piece that, in mirror-polished and acid-etched stainless steel, promises to present “a glimpse of interstellar horizons, the monumental shadows of the planets and the glittering light of a thousand distant suns” – worth having a look by the sounds of it.

The Boullee Table

Edition of 8 + 2 AP

Material: Mirror polished & etched stainless steel

Sphere available in Black, Brass or Mirror Polished Finish

Size: L120 x W120 x H35cm (Tabletop)

Brooksbank & Collins’ Boullee Table is named in honour of Etienne Louis Boullee, 1728 – 1799, a neo-classical architect whose visionary design for Newton’s Cenotaph interprets his subject’s ground breaking conceptions of time and space via a monumental language of form and light.

The Boullee table is a distillation of pure form rendered in mirror polished and acid etched stainless steel. It is constructed from three structural elements – sphere, disc and axial base – which interlock in accordance with the movement of the heavens. The piece presents a glimpse of interstellar horizons, the monumental shadows of the planets and the glittering light of a thousand distant suns.

For all sales & press enquiries please contact Gallery FUMI

Photographs by Stephen Lenthall

Boullee with Black Sphere:

Boullee with Brass Sphere:

Boullee with Mirror Polished Sphere:

The Fossus Carrara Table

Each piece is unique

Material: Carrara Marble and White Resin

Size: L71 x W50 x H22.2cm

Brooksbank & Collins’ Fossus Table is named from the Latin ‘Fossus’, translated as ‘chiseled’ or ‘dug up’. Imagined as an artefact unearthed, Fossus is both ancient and futuristic. When you get really close to Fossus it transforms from a piece of furniture to resembling a landscape of plateaus raised above jagged cliffs in miniature. You can imagine that the surface of the plateau is inscribed with mysterious intersecting hieroglyphs like the ancient Nazca land lines in Peru (500 B.C. – A.D. 500).

The Fossus table is a monolith of solid marble, pieces of marble are removed from the edge of the monolith to achieve a weathered form; by contrast, the top surface is polished to an exquisite mirror sheen and inlaid with a hieroglyphic notation of abstract lines. The lines give the intriguing impression of having been delicately overlaid into the table surface – in fact they have been carved deep into the body of rock with visceral linear cuts inlaid with specialist resin.

For all sales & press enquiries please contact Gallery FUMI

The Caulis 180 Vase

Edition of 50

Material: Arabascato Marble

Size: L44.7 x W5 x H22.3cm

Brooksbank & Collins’ Caulis vases are named from the Latin Caulis, translated as “Stem”. Held at an oblique angle, the flower and stem extends from the vase like the stroke of a calligrapher’s pen.

Tom Brooksbank comments: “When I was a child, my mother read me The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, 1900 -1944. Allan and I thought of the book’s miniature planet whilst designing Caulis – the planet with the single flower growing on it. When you put a Chrysanthemum in the Caulis, the marble striations resemble the landscape of the planet with a single outsize flower – it’s a very playful piece.”

The following plan is employed to create the Caulis vases; a regular polygon is drawn, it is then cut in half and then in half again. The system works for all even numbered polygon. The products of the plan are vases that do the minimum required to support their function, the material is left to be the main actor.

For all sales & press enquiries please contact Gallery FUMI

Photographs by Stephen Lenthall

The Caulis 90 Vase

Edition of 50

Material: Arabascato Marble

Size: L22.3 x W5 x H22.3cm

Brooksbank & Collins’ Caulis vases are named from the Latin Caulis, translated as “Stem”. Held at an oblique angle, the flower and stem extends from the vase like the stroke of a calligrapher’s pen.

Tom Brooksbank comments: “When I was a child, my mother read me The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, 1900 -1944. Allan and I thought of the book’s miniature planet whilst designing Caulis – the planet with the single flower growing on it. When you put a Chrysanthemum in the Caulis, the marble striations resemble the landscape of the planet with a single outsize flower – it’s a very playful piece.”

The following plan is employed to create the Caulis vases; a regular polygon is drawn, it is then cut in half and then in half again. The system works for all even numbered polygon. The products of the plan are vases that do the minimum required to support their function, the material is left to be the main actor.

For all sales & press enquiries please contact Gallery FUMI

Photographs by Stephen Lenthall

The Neptis Vase

Edition: Limited to 150 of each colour

Material: Cast from Jesmonite, Green, Satin Finish

Size: L18.5 x W5 x H18.5cm

Brooksbank & Collins’ Neptis vases are named from the Latin Neptis translated as “granddaughter”. Neptis is the direct descendent of the family of Caulis Vases and demonstrates Tom and Allan’s continual research and development of families of objects.

“We want to offer the audience a point of view, or rather a grammar, to understand and compare the different structures. Through photography, we try to arrange these shapes and render them comparable. To do so, the objects must be isolated from their context and freed from all association.” Bernd Becher (1931 – 2007) & Hilla Becher (1934 – 2015), German Conceptual Artists.

Inspired by the artists and photographers associated with the New Objective movement which began in Germany in the 1920’s, the family of Neptis Vases are grouped together as general types. Hereditary characteristics are passed on from each parent within the Neptis family, each new offspring adds one extra facet to its face, growing proportionally larger. Each Vase is a perfect Polygon and each facet of that polygon is a perfect square; by using this plan the Vases are thus objective and can be compared as per scientific specimens.

Photographs by Stephen Lenthall

The Neptis Vase

Edition: Limited to 150 of each colour

Material: Cast from Jesmonite, Black, Satin Finish

Size: L18.5 x W5 x H18.5cm

Brooksbank & Collins’ Neptis vases are named from the Latin Neptis translated as “granddaughter”. Neptis is the direct descendent of the family of Caulis Vases and demonstrates Tom and Allan’s continual research and development of families of objects.

“We want to offer the audience a point of view, or rather a grammar, to understand and compare the different structures. Through photography, we try to arrange these shapes and render them comparable. To do so, the objects must be isolated from their context and freed from all association.” Bernd Becher (1931 – 2007) & Hilla Becher (1934 – 2015), German Conceptual Artists.

Inspired by the artists and photographers associated with the New Objective movement which began in Germany in the 1920’s, the family of Neptis Vases are grouped together as general types. Hereditary characteristics are passed on from each parent within the Neptis family, each new offspring adds one extra facet to its face, growing proportionally larger. Each Vase is a perfect Polygon and each facet of that polygon is a perfect square; by using this plan the Vases are thus objective and can be compared as per scientific specimens.

Photographs by Stephen Lenthall

The Fossus Nero Marquina Table

Each piece is unique

Material: Nero Marquina Marble and Black Resin

Size: L71 x W50 x H22.2cm

Brooksbank & Collins’ Fossus Table is named from the Latin ‘Fossus’, translated as ‘chiseled’ or ‘dug up’. Imagined as an artefact unearthed, Fossus is both ancient and futuristic. When you get really close to Fossus it transforms from a piece of furniture to resembling a landscape of plateaus raised above jagged cliffs in miniature. You can imagine that the surface of the plateau is inscribed with mysterious intersecting hieroglyphs like the ancient Nazca land lines in Peru (500 B.C. – A.D. 500).

The Fossus table is a monolith of solid marble, pieces of marble are removed from the edge of the monolith to achieve a weathered form; by contrast, the top surface is polished to an exquisite mirror sheen and inlaid with a hieroglyphic notation of abstract lines. The lines give the intriguing impression of having been delicately overlaid into the table surface – in fact they have been carved deep into the body of rock with visceral linear cuts inlaid with specialist resin.

For all sales & press enquiries please contact Gallery FUMI

Photographs by Guy Farrow

The Carbo Asper Table

Edition: 20 + 2 AP

Material: Mild steel – hot-dip spun galvanised

Size: L96 x W96 x H24cm

Brooksbank & Collins’ Carbo tables can be understood as pure concept and take their cue from the System based American Conceptual artists of the 1960/70’s.

“The system is the work of art; the visual work of art is the proof of the System. The visual aspect can’t be understood without understanding the system. It isn’t what it looks like but what it is that is of basic importance”.

Sol LeWitt, 1928 – 2007, American Conceptual Artist.

The Carbo tables are a pure mathematic representation; with components combining to create two horizontal surfaces, the lower horizontal surface’s shape is always an integer of the upper horizontal shape. The Coffee table is double the length, double the width and half the height of its numerically similar Side table.

The Carbo tables are ordered according to the taxonomic ranks employed by biologists, relationships are indexed at the same rank and new Carbos are created by moving up and down the ranks.

The product of the system are currently Coffee and Side Tables but could expand to incorporate different typologies.

Photographs by Stephen Lenthall

The Carbo Flavus Table

Edition: 20 + 2 AP

Material: Mild steel – zinc plated and yellow passivated

Size: L48 x W48 x H48cm

Brooksbank & Collins’ Carbo tables can be understood as pure concept and take their cue from the System based American Conceptual artists of the 1960/70’s.

“The system is the work of art; the visual work of art is the proof of the System. The visual aspect can’t be understood without understanding the system. It isn’t what it looks like but what it is that is of basic importance”.

Sol LeWitt, 1928 – 2007, American Conceptual Artist.

The Carbo tables are a pure mathematic representation; with components combining to create two horizontal surfaces, the lower horizontal surface’s shape is always an integer of the upper horizontal shape. The Coffee table is double the length, double the width and half the height of its numerically similar Side table.

The Carbo tables are ordered according to the taxonomic ranks employed by biologists, relationships are indexed at the same rank and new Carbos are created by moving up and down the ranks.

The product of the system are currently Coffee and Side Tables but could expand to incorporate different typologies.

Photographs by Stephen Lenthall

The first edition of The Makings of Luxury launches this May at Clerkenwell Design Week 2014 (CDW). The micro-exhibition will present an edit of five UK makers, each demonstrating a contemporary interpretation of a timeless skill.

Short curated videos will describe the process, studio, tools and materials that have made each exhibit. Confirmed exhibitors include refined concrete forms by Katharina Eisenkoeck, polished brass vessels by Brooksbank & Collins, hand-thrown ceramics by Nigel Matthews, silversmith Juliette Bigley, and hand-woven textiles by Bristol-based studio, Dash & Miller.

The exhibition is located in the ADDITIONS hall, which presents smaller design pieces to gallery owners, interior designers and retail buyers, the micro-exhibition. Supported by CRAFTS magazine, makers have been carefully selected from across the UK.

Organiser Nick Wiltshire comments: “The antithesis of mass production, the maker is both the architect and the artisan, producing limited quantities with a very pure expression of concept. For the collector, these makers offer original aesthetics and highly skilled execution, but also the opportunity to commission bespoke works and explore precious materials that you rarely see in large-scale manufacture.”

Deezen June 2014

The Me-Far Uelox Vessels

Edition of 8 + 2 AP

Material: Silver & 18ct Gold & Rhodium; Hallmarked

Size: L21 x W13.5 x H13cm (both vessels nesting)

An ancient text which observed the Kimonos worn by the Japanese Samurai captures the spirit of Brooksbank & Collins’ Me-Far Vessels;

“His kimono was restrained in colour – according to the solemnity of his office – but in fine and abundant silk in accordance with his rank and wealth. As he knelt on the tatami mat, the stiff fabric of his sleeves and shoulder garments fell in geometric layers at his sides. The lines enveloping him were poised, considered and restrained, giving a formality and ceremony to his form like a dragon fly resting on a leaf, or a piece of origami.”

The Me-Far series is an analysis of geometry and the sequential numbering of polygons, each set of vessels is one result of that analysis. A great variety of forms emerge from the analysis but there are geometrical limitations leading to a finite series of Me-Far Vessels.

Each set of the vessels can be nested together into a single decorative piece. Alternatively they can be playfully combined in a variety of different ways, each of which creates different geometrical patterns and reflections. Made from Precious and semi-precious metals, Sterling Silver, Gold and Rhodium, Copper and Bronze, the series of Me-Far Vessels uses the most exquisite materials to highlight their forms and the materials surfaces reflect each other in bewildering complexity.

For all sales & press enquiries please contact Gallery FUMI

Photographs by Stephen Lenthall

The Me-Far Nitor Vessels

Edition of 8 + 2 AP

Material: Silver & 18ct Gold; Hallmarked

Size: L21 x W13.5 x H13cm (both vessels nesting)

An ancient text which observed the Kimonos worn by the Japanese Samurai captures the spirit of Brooksbank & Collins’ Me-Far Vessels;

“His kimono was restrained in colour – according to the solemnity of his office – but in fine and abundant silk in accordance with his rank and wealth. As he knelt on the tatami mat, the stiff fabric of his sleeves and shoulder garments fell in geometric layers at his sides. The lines enveloping him were poised, considered and restrained, giving a formality and ceremony to his form like a dragon fly resting on a leaf, or a piece of origami.”

The Me-Far series is an analysis of geometry and the sequential numbering of polygons, each set of vessels is one result of that analysis. A great variety of forms emerge from the analysis but there are geometrical limitations leading to a finite series of Me-Far Vessels.

Each set of the vessels can be nested together into a single decorative piece. Alternatively they can be playfully combined in a variety of different ways, each of which creates different geometrical patterns and reflections. Made from Precious and semi-precious metals, Sterling Silver, Gold and Rhodium, Copper and Bronze, the series of Me-Far Vessels uses the most exquisite materials to highlight their forms and the materials surfaces reflect each other in bewildering complexity.

For all sales & press enquiries please contact Gallery FUMI

Photographs by Stephen Lenthall

The Me-Far Altus Vessels

Edition of 8 + 2 AP

Material: Silver; Hallmarked

Size: L25 x W15.6 x H11cm (all 3 vessels nesting)

An ancient text which observed the Kimonos worn by the Japanese Samurai captures the spirit of Brooksbank & Collins’ Me-Far Vessels;

“His kimono was restrained in colour – according to the solemnity of his office – but in fine and abundant silk in accordance with his rank and wealth. As he knelt on the tatami mat, the stiff fabric of his sleeves and shoulder garments fell in geometric layers at his sides. The lines enveloping him were poised, considered and restrained, giving a formality and ceremony to his form like a dragon fly resting on a leaf, or a piece of origami.”

The Me-Far series is an analysis of geometry and the sequential numbering of polygons, each set of vessels is one result of that analysis. A great variety of forms emerge from the analysis but there are geometrical limitations leading to a finite series of Me-Far Vessels.

Each set of the vessels can be nested together into a single decorative piece. Alternatively they can be playfully combined in a variety of different ways, each of which creates different geometrical patterns and reflections. Made from Precious and semi-precious metals, Sterling Silver, Gold and Rhodium, Copper and Bronze, the series of Me-Far Vessels uses the most exquisite materials to highlight their forms and the materials surfaces reflect each other in bewildering complexity.

For all sales & press enquiries please contact Gallery FUMI

Photographs by Stephen Lenthall

The Me-Far Quinque Vessels

Edition of 8 + 2 AP

Material: Bronze; Patinated finish

Size: L43 x W43 x H14.4cm (all 3 vessels nesting)

An ancient text which observed the Kimonos worn by the Japanese Samurai captures the spirit of Brooksbank & Collins’ Me-Far Vessels;

“His kimono was restrained in colour – according to the solemnity of his office – but in fine and abundant silk in accordance with his rank and wealth. As he knelt on the tatami mat, the stiff fabric of his sleeves and shoulder garments fell in geometric layers at his sides. The lines enveloping him were poised, considered and restrained, giving a formality and ceremony to his form like a dragon fly resting on a leaf, or a piece of origami.”

The Me-Far series is an analysis of geometry and the sequential numbering of polygons, each set of vessels is one result of that analysis. A great variety of forms emerge from the analysis but there are geometrical limitations leading to a finite series of Me-Far Vessels.

Each set of the vessels can be nested together into a single decorative piece. Alternatively they can be playfully combined in a variety of different ways, each of which creates different geometrical patterns and reflections. Made from Precious and semi-precious metals, Sterling Silver, Gold and Rhodium, Copper and Bronze, the series of Me-Far Vessels uses the most exquisite materials to highlight their forms and the materials surfaces reflect each other in bewildering complexity.

For all sales & press enquiries please contact Gallery FUMI

Photographs by Stephen Lenthall

Brooksbank and Collins are delighted to announce that our Me-Far Copper bowls feature in the book “Alle Metalle” by Antonia Henschel from the German publisher Trademark Publishing.

“Alle Metalle” showcases classic products as well as contemporary design made of metal.

The Me-Far Tribus Vessels

Edition of 8 + 2 AP

Material: Copper; Waxed finish

Size: L52 x W49.1 x H16cm (all 8 vessels nesting)

An ancient text which observed the Kimonos worn by the Japanese Samurai captures the spirit of Brooksbank & Collins’ Me-Far Vessels;

“His kimono was restrained in colour – according to the solemnity of his office – but in fine and abundant silk in accordance with his rank and wealth. As he knelt on the tatami mat, the stiff fabric of his sleeves and shoulder garments fell in geometric layers at his sides. The lines enveloping him were poised, considered and restrained, giving a formality and ceremony to his form like a dragon fly resting on a leaf, or a piece of origami.”

The Me-Far series is an analysis of geometry and the sequential numbering of polygons, each set of vessels is one result of that analysis. A great variety of forms emerge from the analysis but there are geometrical limitations leading to a finite series of Me-Far Vessels.

Each set of the vessels can be nested together into a single decorative piece. Alternatively they can be playfully combined in a variety of different ways, each of which creates different geometrical patterns and reflections. Made from Precious and semi-precious metals, Sterling Silver, Gold and Rhodium, Copper and Bronze, the series of Me-Far Vessels uses the most exquisite materials to highlight their forms and the materials surfaces reflect each other in bewildering complexity.

For all sales & press enquiries please contact Gallery FUMI

Photographs by Stephen Lenthall