Fashion’s Favorite Interior Designer Luke Edward Hall Joins Forces With Ginori
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WORLDS COLLIDE: The historic Italian porcelain company Richard Ginori took a more carefree, experimental approach to its latest collaboration, inviting the young and buzzy British interior designer Luke Edward Hall to lend his quirky eye to a tabletop collection.
“We are one of the oldest porcelain companies and maybe the last one in Italy that creates these very fine porcelains. Having the ability to work with a very young and also talented and super generous artist has been extraordinary for our design team,” said Mehdi Benabadji, the company’s new chief executive officer.
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The new range, dubbed “Il Viaggio di Nettuno” — which is Italian for “Voyage of Neptune” — includes porcelain plates, mugs, vases and bowls featuring illustrations of Neptune, the ancient Roman god of the sea and shells, in Edward Hall’s signature pastel hues.
A post shared by RICHARD GINORI (@manifatturarichardginori) on Sep 10, 2019 at 6:01am PDT
“The collection speaks to both Ginori and Luke because it’s mixing history with modernity and it’s also very playful with those colors. [Achieving them] has been some kind of a headache to be honest, but we love that because it was a challenge and experimentation is good. It offered this twist that we were looking for,” said Benabadji.
The company toasted the collaboration with a dinner at the private member’s club in London at 5 Hertford Street, whose nostalgic, vintage-inspired interiors blended in with the candy colors of the new line, used to serve guests a three-course meal of hearty Italian dishes.
Edward Hall, dressed in his signature colorful suit and extra-large bow tie, welcomed a crowd of fashion and design industry figures and said that the draw for him in this partnership had to be “the regular work trips to Florence” — and the ability to work with and learn from the Ginori craftsmen in the company’s factory there.
He is a frequent collaborator with many brands and in the past has created artwork for the likes of Burberry, luxury outlet Bicester Village and footwear label Stubbs & Wootton.
For Ginori, this is the first time it has put itself forward in London and British retailers are already responding, with Liberty London and Matchesfashion.com, which has been making a big push in the interiors world in the last year, buying into the collection.
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