Bill Amberg Studio Moore & Giles collection
When a leather specialist comes together with artists, a new way of looking at canvas emerges.
Trained in traditional techniques around shoemaking and saddlery in Australia, designer Bill Amberg — with whom we had a long talk full of insights on sustainable approaches to design — believes in the power of mastering one single material and, from that, going beyond. That was the starting point of Bill Amberg Print, a leg of his Studio focused on discovering fresh takes on printing.
"The idea of the printing is no different to the really beautiful gold and bust panels from Florence in the 15th and 16th centuries. It's really taking that whole idea of a very traditional colored leather panel on the wall or on a piece of furniture and just making it modern. Using all the opportunities that we have in terms of material and techniques now and utilizing them in a modern way," Bill shared in our f2f.
With a color range & texture similar to those found in paper, the digitally printed leather developed gave endless possibilities for upholstery patterns. With natural pigments, designers like Tom Dixon can experiment. Their collection reimagines materials like foil, rock, dichroic, and even hair with the help of high-resolution photos for hyper-real prints. In Amberg's own words, that's how he "plays with color."
"The Tom Dixon print takes a traditional chair and reupholstering it in this wonderful print. And that's a kind of completely traditional in a sense, but again, it just makes something really different, new, and unusual."
Amberg's atelier even created a Moore & Guiles pattern collection with British artists Amber Khokhar, Kesewa Aboah, Jonathan Saunders, Bethan Gray, and Yinka Ilori. Pushing along different ideas with the same technique, they created a fusion of craft & visual art.
"By concentrating on one material, really exploring that material, and working with different tanneries and craftsmen, you're just learning stuff the whole time. You're learning something new, so we never really do the same thing twice. You end up doing new stuff the whole time and that's kind of cool."
Here's to ideas that never stop evolving.
Discover more about Bill Amberg's work by watching the video of our chat.