CLOSEUP May 2021: North American Studios #1
The North American Studios sessions are dedicated to North American-based designers, makers, and studios. In this session, we introduce you to Ian Love, Tramarte, & Luminaire Authentik.
Ian Love
Designer Ian Love had been a career musician for his entire career until six years ago, when tremendous tragedy struck his family. His life was drastically reoriented, with his priorities and creative perspective following suit. The half decade of adversity persists in its effects, but the forced shifts in his thinking and approaches to living because of it are not lost on him. One deceptively inconsequential shift was that Ian was driven to gardening; the only respite he could find from his family’s turmoil was in the soil, working with his hands, and learning about botanical systems and their cyclical interplays with life, growth and death. At his home on Long Island he expanded on this idea of working with his hands—an inclination whose nascence lies in his having played instruments for so many years—beginning woodworking projects with his daughter. The practice eventually developed into furniture making, a critical turning point toward the design business he’s built today.
With a collection of design and functional art pieces includes resin-filled burl sculptures and objet, large-scale spalted wood dining tables and daybeds, multi-purpose room dividers, storage and case pieces, tabletop items and home goods, charming headboards, trunk or root-based suspended lighting systems and chandeliers, mirrors and mixed-media wall art, benches, and an incredibly diverse line of hand-carved stools with playful variations on leg designs and stump bases.
With an innate attraction to spalted (diseased) wood because of its marbled character, Ian’s mediums span all genus of timber: cherry blossom, walnut, oak, cedar, maple, elm, hickory; as well as resin, concrete, alabaster, stone, metals and mixed-media found flora. A constantly evolving practice, Ian’s signature hand-chattered imprint finds itself into many of his designs, validating an appreciation of the imperfect in his holistic design concepts and their unconventionally beautiful finished products.
Tramarte
Tramarte is a design studio based in Mexico City. It specializes in the creation of handmade textiles using traditional techniques with a contemporary twist. Production takes place in Mexico City and Teotitlán del Valle, Oaxaca, where a family of artisans works the pedal loom and makes sure that every piece is expertly woven.
Brenda and Ana, co-founders, designed their collection in Mexico City and currently collaborate with Orlando and Aida, a family of artisans that have dedicated their lives to the elaboration of wool rugs, using local and natural fibers. Every color is dyed by hand by these two artists in their workshop where they use their expertise to match each color perfectly to the design. Then they take each piece to the loom, weave piece by piece for hours and then send them toMexico City where they receive some final touches before being sold.
Luminaire Authentik
Expressing creativity, design and functionality is the very essence of Luminaire Authentik. Inspired by Scandinavian aesthetics, their lamps are drawn, designed and made in their Cowansville atelier, in Quebec. Luminaire Authentik designs and creates custom lighting. They believe in collaboration and making the human factor in the first row and are proud to collaborate with local talent for all of the material introduced within their lighting collection. Luminaire Authentik is Authentically Canadian.
