Carpenters Workshop Gallery returns to PAD London with a booth showcasing the finest in contemporary design and functional art, featuring rare masterpieces by several esteemed artists and designers working at the cutting edge of creativity, craftsmanship and aesthetic culture.
On displays are works by Nacho Carbonell, Vincenzo de Cotiis, Ingrid Donat, Luke Fuller, Roger Herman, Claude Lalanne, Gareth Mason, Frederik Molenschot, Rick Owens, Simone Prouvé, Marcin Rusak, Joaquim Tenreiro and Atelier Van Lieshout. Celebrating the role of individual creative perspective within a collective artistic and visual language, the exhibited pieces testify to the gallery’s commitment to ways of making that encompass a rich variety of disciplines and traditional artistic genres.
French sculptor and designer Claude Lalanne was recognised for blurring the line between the fine and decorative arts, producing sculpture, jewellery and design pieces inspired by animal or vegetal imagery. Lalanne’s gilt-bronze sculpture Ginkgo Dining Table consists of oversized ginkgo leaves, one of the world’s oldest tree species. Drawing inspiration from elements of Art Nouveau and Surrealism, the piece exemplifies the artist’s ability to transform nature into sculptural artworks. This work will be at the heart of the presentation drawing in to conversation the contemporary works around it.
Spanish artist Nacho Carbonell is known for his tactile approach to sculpture that plays with textures, experimental techniques and explores the relationship between the natural and manmade worlds. Ceramic Table Lamp (250/2023) reflects the artist’s fascination with living organisms, featuring various ceramic elements amassed together to create a hybrid, organic form supported by a metal core. The expressive shape of the sculpture renders the lamp both fantastical and functional.
Fuelled by parallelisms of space and time, Italian artist Vincenzo De Cotiis creates sculptural spaces that evoke physical and intellectual experiences, often born out of an assembly of recovered materials and reflective, futuristic surfaces, appearing evocative in their final form. Made using cast white bronze, DC1826A Mirror has a fractured, asymmetrical composition, resembling the cut of a precious gem, capturing the interplay of light across its various polished surfaces.
California-born designer Rick Owens is known for his fondness of unconventional luxury, brutalist structures, unexpected forms and intriguing details. Fashioned from plywood and featuring a unique tiger-like pattern, Gallic Chair Tigre Plywood embodies a language of sophistication and rebellion. Crafted with precision from sleek black plywood, the minimalistic sculpture Octoplug Black Plywood is an avantgarde testament to the beauty and sophistication found in simplicity.
Italian artist Giacomo Ravagli’s work resides on the principles of light, continuum, intensity and solitude. He learned to carve marble in the sculpture workshops of Pietrasanta and went on to develop a practice that also incorporates clay and metal, with works mixing sculpture and architecture and alluding to heaviness and lightness. In CORAL 2 Chandelier, sheets of patinated brass are folded into an abstract geometric shape, creating an angular, modular lighting piece.
Often referred to as the father of Brazilian modernism, Joaquim Tenreiro created a new visual language to design furniture that fit the Brazilian style of life, often using native woods. Among the most acclaimed of his sculptural designs is Cadeira de Três Pés (Three-Legged Chair), which features five different Brazilian hardwoods inlaid together. The chair reveals the artist’s ability to craft unyielding materials with precision and to masterfully use curved lines to accommodate the human body.
The walls of the booth at PAD London are imprinted with sketches of Carpenters Workshop Gallery’s emblematic London location, Ladbroke Hall. A Beaux-Arts building dating back to 1903, Ladbroke Hall has been reimagined by Carpenters Workshop Gallery’s co-founders Loïc Le Gaillard and Julien Lombrail as a meeting place for contemporary innovation. The gallery’s London home since 2023, Ladbroke Hall is now the beating heart of a living community exploring all forms of artistic expression and blurring the boundaries between different art forms. Visitors at PAD London are invited to consider how historic urban spaces can be reimagined to address contemporary challenges and celebrate creative expression.
