SUITE NY is proud to carry Belgian atelier accessory design house, when objects work. The vision of its director, Beatrice de Lafontaine, when objects work produces exclusive objects designed by leading designers and architects whose work shares a preoccupation with basic forms, immaculate function and a timeless idiom. The brand notes an observation from William Morris as their overarching philosophy: one should ‘have nothing in your house which you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful’. when objects work features immaculate designs for the home by John Pawson, Shigeru Ban, Vincent Van Duysen, Maarten van Severen, Kate Hume and more. The collection includes vases, containers, serving trays, carafes, cookware, flatware and tabletop necessities in a myriad of mediums from glass to porcelain and bronze to wood.
World-renowned architect John Pawson created an inaugural collection for when objects work titled “5 Objects.” Each of Pawson’s pieces is a container based on a basic geometric shape and explores the interaction between material and form. The JP Large bowl is a perfect bronze hemisphere. The interior is filled with sand allowing the bowl to rest at various angles despite it’s lack of a flat base. Because the inner-workings are hidden from site, Pawson’s bowl arouses an interactive curiosity wherever it is placed.
Cast in bronze, John Pawson’s candleholders were originally conceived as components of the interior landscape of the Church of the Cistercian Monastery of Novy Dvur in Bohemia. Their shape derives from a fragment of a section throughout the nave of the church, but interestingly enough, also resembles an abstract kneeling form.
Belgian architect Vincent Van Duysen’s collection of pottery epitomizes his minimalist aesthetic, use of natural materials and subtle color. Though each piece is powerful in isolation, the collection is conceived as an entity: an evocation of the shelves of stacked vessels in a potter’s studio. Read as a series, the differences of scale and color create powerful rhythms and modulations expressed in the subtle but intense palette of a northern European sky.
Each piece is composed of two elements: an earthenware container and a wooden plate. While the angle of curve and smooth profile of each pot are fixed, the diameter and the height of the vessels vary. These shifts in scale determine whether the container is a bowl or a platter. The thickness of the wooden plates, which serve as both cover and plinth, are also variable.