The next guided tour will be held on Friday 29th May at 6pm, meeting point will be at the reception desk inside the main entrance on Cromwell Road.
The exhibition:
The V&A and Crafts Council exhibition ‘What is Luxury?’ interrogates how luxury is made and understood in many facets. The curators Jana Scholze and Leanne Wierzba choose objects from artists, artisans, collectors and the V&A's collections to explore the concept of luxury.
Following their engraved attache case exhibited at Crafts Council's “Added Value?” exhibition in 2012 (https://vimeo.com/49594405), Studio Ruuger offers another play on their signature piece.
The archetypal square and serious hard staple accessory of the traditional businessman is shown decorated with a detailed pattern of flowers and leaves. What initially appears as a romantic arrangement of flora, on closer inspection turns into a death scene: the flowers appear torn, broken and carelessly scattered, as a small bird lies amongst them with a broken wing, in a slew of lost feathers. “A Funeral of a Swallow”.
Inspired by Flemish flower garland paintings and a series of photographs of a gradually decaying flower arrangement, the intricate pattern consists of 1046 unique individually cut pieces of goat leather, across 12 colour shades, developed in collaboration with a renowned French tannery, Alran S.A.S. Combined to form a single smooth surface, the painstaking inlaying process took the London based studio over 300 hours to complete. The resulting leather pattern was then carefully stretched over a 3D printed framework and fitted with custom produced solid brass locks and hinges, resulting in a unique artistic product which combines time-honoured traditional leather-working techniques with the use of cutting edge technology.
The studio:
Studio Ruuger was established in 2012 by Oliver Ruuger and Volker Koch who met during their Master studies MA Fashion Artefact (http://showtime.arts.ac.uk/oruuger http://showtime.arts.ac.uk/VolkerKoch) at the London College of Fashion. Originally the studio was set up to produce experimental crafted pieces for a small group of private clients. This has remained the main focus of the studio, while a line of core products has since been introduced, in line with their distinctive practice.
The team runs a highly specialised atelier in North London, producing signature umbrellas, briefcases and design objects, which play with the archetypal character of the English gentleman — offsetting the strict formality with an eccentric, almost mischievous spirit. All work is conceived and produced in house over an extended period of time. As an example, the engraved “Night at the House of Epicurus” briefcase, produced in 2012, took a combined 600 hours to complete, spread over 8 months.
The methods of the studio employ the use of beautiful old industrial machinery and traditional hand tools, contrasted with the application of high end digital manufacturing processes, which allow for an unprecedented level of detail and precision. This meticulous approach leads to a slow and natural development of new work, unaffected by the seasonal rhythm of the fashion industry. During recent years the studio has introduced only a handful of new products, yet the obsessive attention to detail has gained the attention of key clients worldwide. www.ruuger.com
