Adrian Sassoon, the United Kingdom’s premier gallery for international, contemporary works of art—with a focus on innovative, luxurious objects—will exhibit for the fifth consecutive year at The Salon of Art + Design at the Park Avenue Armory in New York City this fall. The gallery will showcase new and recent pieces—some of which will make their U.S. debut at The Salon—by a dynamic roster of highly skilled and classically trained artists working in traditional materials ranging from ancient hardstones to porcelain, glass, wood, and precious metals. Featured artists include ceramicists Andrew Wicks, Michael Eden, and Kate Malone—all of whom will be present at The Salon Art + Design alongside Adrian Sassoon. Works in steel, silver and glass by Junko Mori, Hiroshi Suzuki and Colin Reid, among others, will also be on display.  

Sassoon’s presence at The Salon will serve as a unique platform where traditional sensibilities and cutting-edge technology converge harmoniously through a wealth of contemporary objects. The installation will juxtapose “classic” forms and materials, with computer-generated 3D designs; demonstrating the gallery’s enduring commitment to promoting the continuity of the history of the decorative arts.

A fervent champion of some of today’s most groundbreaking artisans, with an eye for exquisite design and detail, Adrian Sassoon has spent 25 years arranging major solo shows throughout the U.K. and at the world’s most prestigious art fairs. The meticulously curated presentation at the 2017 Salon Art + Design is a testament to Sassoon’s legacy as a trusted expert in the field. Throughout his career, Sassoon has assembled a diverse mix of artists working in a wealth of materials that continue to be highly coveted by a broad range of collectors, museums and interior designers worldwide.

“Each of our artists will bring something new to The Salon this year,” comments Adrian Sassoon, “but the common thread throughout our selection is an unparalleled dedication to craftsmanship and a sense of luxury. We are showing works of beauty and originality and presenting them with the same pride and conviction we have demonstrated for the past 25 years. It has always been our aim to invigorate this exciting field of collecting.”

THE SALON ART + DESIGN:

Adrian Sassoon is honored to be a part of The Salon Art + Design alongside the world’s finest galleries exhibiting historical, modern and contemporary furniture, groundbreaking decorative arts and late 19th and 20th century fine art. The 2017 edition of The Salon will take place from November 9 to 13. Opening Hours are as follows:

Friday, November 10            11 am – 8 pm

Saturday, November 11      11 am – 7 pm

Sunday, November 12         11 am – 7 pm

Monday, November 13       11 am – 5 pm

Tickets can be purchased at www.thesalonny.com

ARTISTS BIOS:

Michael Eden (New Technologies & Ceramics)

A selection of new works from contemporary artist Michael Eden’s current exhibition at the Bowes Museum, U.K., entitled: Wedgwood and Wouldn’t (May 27 – September 17, 2017) will travel to New York for the first time for The Salon. Michael Eden is a maker whose work sits at the intersection of craft, design, and art, exploring contemporary themes through the redesign of historical and culturally familiar objects. Eden is at the forefront of a new industrial revolution using 3D printing, utilizing digital methods and materials to create objects that were previously impossible to manufacture with conventional ceramic techniques. Eden’s work is featured in many important public collections around the world, including the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge; Kresz Mária Foundation, Budapest; National Museum, Stockholm; National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo; Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, New York; Museum of Arts and Design, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

Kate Malone (Ceramics)

Kate Malone is one of the U.K.’s leading ceramic artists with an illustrious career spanning thirty years and studios in London and France. She has developed an unmistakable and highly regarded style, evidenced by her hand-made pots and intricately ornamented sculptures. Observations of nature and exotic travels are the overriding influences in Malone’s work; she has also spent her career pioneering glazing techniques through extensive research and experimentation in the chemistry of glazing. The sophistication of her glazes has led to important collaborations with prominent architects and designers on public art projects, including a tiled building façade for 24 Savile Row in London with EPR Architects (2015); The Bud, a sculpture created for the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, and Ceramic Wall, the cladding for the exterior wall of the American Express HQ Building in Brighton (both 2012).

Malone’s work is represented in the collections of the Arts Council, London; Ashmolean Museum, Oxford; Manchester Art Gallery, Manchester; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), among others.

Junko Mori (Metalwork)

The assemblage of forged and cast metal—whether mild steel or pure silver—is the key to Junko Mori’s work. Her observations of tree and plant matter are the driving force behind many of her sculptures, which vary in scale from small objects in precious metal to massive welded steel works of art, and are collected by admirers of antiques and contemporary art alike. “Junko is an artist whose work has propelled forward in the last few years, with hugely intensified complexity,” comments Sassoon. “If a new piece arrives and is packed away for an exhibition before I’ve seen it, I get impatient having to wait for that first look, as so often it will be unlike anything I’ve seen before! To make luxurious objects in silver is not unprecedented, but to make steel take on a luxurious allure is unbelievable.”

 Previous solo exhibitions include shows at The Holburne Museum, Bath (2013), Bluecoat Display Centre, Liverpool (2006) and Manchester City Art Gallery, Manchester (2005), with works in the collections of the National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh; British Museum, London; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Honolulu Museum of Art; and the Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, among others.  

Hiroshi Suzuki (Metalwork)

In less than two decades, Hiroshi Suzuki has become both a leading contemporary silver artist and a critical part of the history and evolution of English Silver. Japanese by birth, Suzuki received a BA in silver-smithing from Tokyo University before coming to the U.K. to complete his MA at the Royal College of Art in 1999. His complex and unparalleled forms are all created from a single flat sheet of silver, and his extraordinary skills are universally admired by museums and collectors worldwide. Public collections in which Suzuki’s work is represented include the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Museum of Arts and Design, New York; Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge; National Museum of Wales, Cardiff, and Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Sassoon notes: “Hiroshi Suzuki – probably the world’s leading silversmith of our era, celebrated for making the metal flow – is both a design marvel and a metalsmith of awesome skill. I have always presented his work like antique silver – smart, precious, luxurious– and with clear eyesight, collectors and museum curators across the world have also come to see his work as exceptional, novel and coveted.”

Colin Reid (Glass)

Colin Reid has achieved worldwide acclaim for his mastery of the techniques of kiln- casting and polishing glass, with sculptures that command attention through intriguing reflections and optical illusions. A graduate of the Stourbridge School of Art, Reid’s work has been exhibited widely—including in the United States, Netherlands, France, Germany, Japan, and New Zealand—and collected by nearly 50 institutions worldwide. “Before I came to the scene, Colin Reid’s work was already in museum and private collections everywhere,” notes Sassoon. “The spontaneous pleasure of an exhibition visitor in seeing his work for the first time is remarkable – I often note that those who buy a sculpture by Colin had no idea they would buy a piece of glass when they woke up that morning!” 

Most recently, Reid’s work has incorporated themes from the castings of masonry at Burton Agnes Hall, an Elizabethan house in Yorkshire. A number of his assistants have also emerged from his studio to become leading glass artists in their own right.

Felicity Aylieff (Ceramics)

Felicity Aylieff established her reputation as a maker of large-scale, sculptural ceramics at the Royal College of Art in 1996. Ten years later, during an ‘incredibly liberating’ artist residency in Jingdezhen, China, she realized the beginning of a series of monumental pots, the largest of which stands three meters high. She has since returned to China each year to develop her large-scale work, focusing on various types of surface decoration. She often incorporates stylized drawings of plants, flowers and objects, colorful clouds of exquisite butterfly transfers, or free hand, gestural painted brushstrokes in cobalt. Represented in major public collections—including the National Museum of Wales, Cardiff; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Montreal; and the Auckland Museum, Auckland—Aylieff’s monumental pots continue to astound international collectors and curators.

“Working with Felicity Aylieff’s monumental ceramics has been such a pleasure,” remarks Sassoon. “Upon seeing them, so many visitors enter into conversations with us: Is the vase they saw at Chatsworth by the same artist? This is very different to the one you showed us last year… Can it be placed outside? Yes, yes, yes...”

Hitomi Hosono (Ceramics)

Born in Japan, Hitomi Hosono studied Ceramics Design in Copenhagen, Denmark before completing an MA in Ceramics and Glass at the Royal College of Art, London in 2009. Inspired by the greenery in East London, Hosono’s work demonstrates a meticulous study of organic botanical forms. To create her signature style, Hosono’s creative process includes using both models and plaster molds, as well as press-molding and hand-carving hundreds of individual plant forms into the porcelain surface, resulting in astoundingly detailed natural patterns that envelop the object’s underlying shape. “From the moment we started to show Hitomi Hosono’s work, when she’d just graduated from the Royal College of Art, we included it in the most prestigious shows – a leap we rarely take at such an early stage,” says Sassoon. “Embroidery in porcelain, I call it; reminding us that for centuries embroidery was one of the most luxurious, and expensive, trades and crafts of all.”

In addition to a series of solo exhibitions in London, Hosono’s work is represented in the collections of the British Museum, London; Victoria and Albert Museum, London, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, as well as institutions in France and Germany.