One of our favorite projects we saw last year was the tile work on a building in London’s Savile Row. We liked it so much that we included it in our first-ever CFile year in review. The tiles were created by London ceramic artist Kate Malone.
We recently found a video of Malone discussing her tiles with EPR Architects’ Stephen Pey. It gives us a little more depth on the scope of a truly unique work of architectural and contemporary ceramic art. Savile Row in Mayfair gives us the word “bespoke” to describe tailor made fashion created to suit an individual client’s specifications. EPR’s building pays homage to that concept with Malone’s handcrafted ceramic tiles, thousands of them, which feature crystalline structures. That motif continues on the bronze plinth of the building. The bronze panels were designed by Michael Eden in collaboration with Malone. Pey called the building “highly decorated” and yet very understated and modern.
“The surface is so rich isn’t it?” Malone said. “I normally make pieces that are very loud and colorful. To hear you say that it still has this depth and decorative quality kind of makes sense… This is pared back but it still has this very rich, decorated, elaborate surface.
The video comes to us from Stephenson Bishop, a collaboration between architectural photographer Jim Stephenson and filmmaker Edward Bishop. In addition to their architecture videos, they also make short 90-second films about artists and designers talking about the creative process and inspiration. You can see more of their work here.
What do you think of Malone’s bespoke contemporary ceramic art? Let us know in the comments.
Quite excited to see Kate Malone taking crystalline glazes into the architectural context. A large scale endeavour that must have required close consultation with industry to realize. All too often my experience has been one of disdain for crystal glazes within the ceramic fraternity. So to see them taken into the building industry in such a strong and successful way is truly inspiring. Given the upcoming 47th IAC conference in Barcelona has an Architectural theme , this project can only serve to bring the technically elusive crystalline glazes to the for.