Past Forward

Sometimes the way forward is to look into the past. At least that is the case with Meta, whose inaugural line of furniture and objects features contemporary industrial designers collaborating with master craftspeople fluent in such eighteenth-century techniques as silversmithing, lost-wax casting, and gilding. Guided by its parent company, Mallett, a 143-year-old British antiques house that specializes in decorative arts, Meta spared no expense in time or materials when fashioning its 12 modern collectibles. Tord Boontje’s Fig Leaf Wardrobe, for example, sports doors encrusted with hand-­enameled glass leaves, an interior upholstered in ­custom-dyed silk, and a bronze hanging system shaped like tree branches. Expected to sell from $40,000 to $697,000 each, the items recall a gilded age when artisans vied to outdo each other to attract patrons, and also offer a fresh twist on the design-art market: objects limited not by number but by the sheer effort and resources needed to make them.

“Over the years we created a few pieces for clients from old archetypes, things like coffee tables that they couldn’t get because they didn’t exist in the 1700s or 1800s,” Mallett’s managing director, Giles Hutchinson Smith, says of Meta’s impetus. “We were rethinking our direction with those items and then met Louise-Anne Comeau and Geoffrey Monge”—whose résumés include work on Swarovski’s Crystal Palace exhibits and Stella McCartney’s New York and London retail stores—“and they suggested introducing a modern level to what we were doing.”

Joining the Meta team as creative directors, Comeau and Monge set out to select the right talent for the pieces. “Mallett doesn’t have a house style—it sells the best of whatever exists in the market,” Comeau says, explaining the variety reflected in the line’s quintet of designers. Boontje made the cut because of the elements of fantasy in his work, while Barber Osgerby was favored for its elegant, timeless style. Comeau and Monge invited Matali Crasset because “she works with a different language, often visiting a ritual or point in time and reexploring it,” Monge says, and Wales & Wales to see how the duo, which fabricates its pieces, would work with a third party. And Asymptote? Comeau and Monge were looking for an architectural practice that was adept at creating surfaces and experimenting with digital technologies.

Finding the project’s 54 artisans took a year longer than expected. Comeau and Monge began their search with Mallett’s contacts in the restoration and art worlds, then looked to countries where original expertise lay: to Italy for the glassblowing skills necessary to form Barber Osgerby’s Murano-glass Cupola lamp, for example; and to China and the United States for the paktong metalwork on Crasset’s Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend 1 lantern.

For the designers involved, the Meta pieces allowed a rare freedom from the usual commercial practicalities. “The end result was not about efficiency of production,” Jay Osgerby says. “It was just getting the perfect answer from the craft and design points of view, with less worries about its cost. It was a real luxury to work that way.” For Asymptote’s Hani Rashid, the project offered a chance to “research powerful and interesting historical techniques” as well as return to the firm’s art-world roots.

“We chose the name Meta because it indicates ‘what comes from,’” Hutchinson Smith says. But although the collection smacks of nostalgia—it would have been interesting to see how the craftspeople could apply their techniques to modern materials, not just traditional ones—these items are hardly quaint throwbacks. Instead, they wear their history lightly, offering innovative forms that stand on their own merits. “We thought if you could mix great designers with fabulous craftsmanship,” Hutchinson Smith adds, “we’d have something that hadn’t been done before.”