The contemporary ceramic and glass dealership Adrian Sassoon knows its place. It is among the beautiful furniture of the 18th century, Islamic works of mythical meaning and historical German paintings, sculpture and silver. “The traditional concessionaires of antiques and art,” he says. “With different tastes, perhaps, but the highest standards.”
The London dealer arrives in Tefaf in Maastricht for 17 years now, and although the work he sends is exclusively done today, he insisted of his first appearance at the fair that he had a place among the concessionaires of the most venerable historical work.
“Because what I have to offer,” he says, “is also part of history. In my opinion, museums rarely collect for a contemporary gallery, but to extend the historical history of the way in which the materials – clay, glass, metal – are transformed by qualified artists. The work I sell has a place in these continuous collections. »»
Not that it is his only constituency. Individual collectors are also important and tefaf offers a lot. “People who are in line with the historic decorative arts understand what we offer,” explains Sassoon. “They will simply pass and suddenly appear on the stand, attracted by something that is both recognizable – a frosting, a shape, a type of glass – but completely new.”
This year, however, Sassoon is expecting a visit to a team from the American museum, coming to Maastricht specially to see a gigantic new work by Junko Mori. It is a sculptural explosion of hundreds of steel elements that the original artist and metal worker of Yokohama has faced his Welsh workshop and will order a six -digit price. “You could say that it is an antiquity of the future,” explains Sassoon. “It has a huge originality at its time of design and manufacturing. He recognizes the history of art, but has a place in his own time. Mori spent hours in museums and collections to examine both ancient ironwork, as well as historical observations of nature. But although this knowledge underpins its work, the intensity of the details and the extreme number of elements make it particularly sumptuous and unique.
Antiquity is generally accepted as an object of more than 100 years, with particular aesthetic and historical importance. The tefaf is full – the fair is the place where a bronze pin made in the west of Iran at the beginning of the first millennium before JC can be found next to a Lalique Art Nouveau collar loaded with diamonds and finely carved glass and a precocious flower paint which already demonstrates a special way with the color.
“We are very curious to see how we will integrate,” explains Robbe Vandewyngarde, the 27 -year -old co -founder of Brussels Gallery Objects with stories. “It's a very classic fair.” In this spirit, his gallery shows the work of the house Duo Jonckers, where a brother and sister team – Alexandra and Grégoire – continue the work of their father Armand, creating sculptural furniture in bronze, stainless steel and silver, sometimes combined with resin. “Like their father, they want to bring depth, feeling and texture to metal,” explains Vandewyngaerde. “They engrave the material abstractly and create something tactile and use oils, waxes and acids to create a patina. It has ancient sensitivity. »»
The objects with stories have already established a link between the past and the present by taking a historic building in Brussels to show the work. Former fur and workshop exhibition hall, built in the Beaux-Arts style, its ground floor is decorated with gold sheets and wall panels painted with animal scenes. “It helped customers imagine how contemporary pieces could work in an older house,” explains Vandewyngaerde. “But we have heard that some of the most traditional dealers in Tefaf were concerned about new works.”
When the London dealer Sarah Myerscough took a position at the fair for the first time last year, she found the opposite. “The historic concessionaires were pleasantly surprised by the quality of the work we showed, how it was done, that it was rooted in classicism,” explains Myerscough. “They were impressed.” Myerscough defended serious crafts and lasting natural materials since she opened her gallery in 1998. Gareth Neal, a designer of East London furniture that works with historical tools and the last computer controlled machinery, is a good example. Myerscough shows a large chest of drawers by Neal biased in its traditional shape by being heavy and finished in mahogany veneers which are waste from the instrument industry.
When I ask Christopher Wilk, the guardian of furniture, textiles and fashion at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, on the important work that is done today, the name of Neal appears: the work of the creator entered the collection in 2013 for the first time. “He is a good designer and a very good manufacturer, referring to traditional forms, but with an innovative edge,” he said. “But we don't worry at the museum to find out if something will be an ancient precious. We are looking for objects that reflect the time they are made and have something interesting to say at that time. Under the management of Wilks, however, the Conservatives must now record exactly why they consider an acquisition as important. “A hundred years ago, people thought that the values of the present moment were fixed or would continue. But now we think that taste and value are very relative. We live in a postmodern world. »»
Collectors, on the other hand, can seek a job that will hold its economic and cultural value. This may be why Marc Benda, from the New York Gallery Friedman Benda, brings a selection of Ettoresass glass works (the Italian designer who died in 2007) in Tefaf. The parts – which include totemic vases in the rich blues and reds – have been manufactured in the last years of Sottsass, and are between 40,000 and 90,000 €. “These are very ambitious sculptures,” explains Benda. “They represent a highlight of his practice and are already considered important. They go beyond a matter of taste. These are canonical works. »»
David Gill, however, who introduced the contemporary collection design to Fulham Road in London – long the field of antiques of the old world – at the end of the 1980s, has faith in the eye of the individual. He has produced extremely demanding parts over the years with designers, including the late Zaha Hadid, and shows the work of the German furniture manufacturer Valentin Loellmann in Tefaf. Loellmann is an aberrant value that creates works from another world by merging metal and wood into pieces that have an almost ineffable sense of history. “Curious collectors kiss the new one,” says Gill. “And if they go with the challenge, they are rewarded years later.”
March 15-20, tefaf.com
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