'Burnished Indigo' by JAMESPLUMB // London Design Festival 2014.

During London Design Festival 2014, intriguing and supremely talented art & design duo JAMESPLUMB presented their eponymous Burnished Indigo collection – a curation of limited edition assemblage and luminaires.

The inspiration for the collection was the discovery of a destroyed 19th Century leather sofa. Captivated by the patina and complexity of the ancient material, JAMESPLUMB set out to find a fabric with the same intriguing beauty, colour and texture. Avoiding the idea of the fake and deliberately distressed, their desire became an obsessive quest. Many interesting discoveries were made along the way, but nothing satisfied their yearn until the encounter with a small antique piece of burnished indigo textile. The search was finally over.

See all our stories from London Design Festival.

INDIGO LUMINAIRE: The fragile, fluid and organic beauty of the fabric is altered by intricate finger pleating. This contrasts dramatically with the simple, graphic line of the steel arms. Beautifully detailed with handmade brasswork. Collaboration with artist William Waterhouse has created an ingenious, simple mechanism allowing the lamp a multidirectional light without compromising the minimal elegance and stark purity.

The process of dying indigo fabric was first recorded in the 12th Century – a ritual of primitive alchemy, just like the creation of Burnished Indigo. A ceremony where fabric is repeatedly submerged in indigo and catalysed with layers of egg white, ox or pig’s blood and fermented fruit juices, with numerous mythical ingredients added.

Throughout this balming, the material is severely beaten with wooden mallets on top of smooth stones. It is then placed under huge, smooth rocking stones. The result is a colour of hypnotic depth and elemental beauty, with atavistic significance. Revered in ancient Eastern civilisation for it’s purifying and stabilising effect on the soul, indigo is referred to as the last colour. The colour of the infinite.

CHESTERFIELD TABLE: A distillation of essence. All that JAMESPLUMB practice is present in a subtle dislocation of the classic. The burnished indigo fabric is handworked into a sumptuous, deep buttoned Chesterfield form. The piece honors the proportion of the original object that silently mused the collection. JAMESPLUMB then boldly disrupt with the intervention of a dramatic table. Brutally slicing through the stately elegance of the sofa. The table is created from oversized lengths of church pews. The antique timber rich with a deep patina of age and wear.

JAMESPLUMB is Hannah Plumb and James Russell, two artists under one name who work with the overlooked and discarded, taking time worn antiques and cast-offs to produce one-off assemblages, luminaires, and interiors. A couple who met in 1998 at Wimbledon School of Art studying Fine Art Sculpture – today they work together under the combined which represents the single artistic voice that builds on their different but complementary approaches. With Hannah’s desire to find life and potential in the forgotten, and James’ interest in exposing hidden beauty in the everyday, they juxtapose practical function with their sculptural vision.

P.S. I previously featured the work of JAMESPLUMB in this post.

See all our stories from London Design Festival.