Mirror Mirror: Reflections on Design at Chatsworth
18th March to 1st October 2023
Chatsworth has always been a centre for creativity, with successive generations of the Cavendish family commissioning art and design contemporary to their times.
A new exhibition is opening today (Saturday 18th March 2023) and is entitled ‘Mirror Mirror: Reflections on Design at Chatsworth’.
The exhibition features commissioned works by 16 contemporary designers and will be on display around both the house and garden.
Each artist involved has responded to one of Chatsworth’s spaces, and was chosen for the way they reflect on the key issues of today – including climate, sustainability, equality and how people connect.
Alex Hodby, senior curator of programme at Chatsworth, said: “This project is a fantastic opportunity to reflect on the design histories at Chatsworth and bring them to the fore with an exciting array of international artists and designers.
“We’re fascinated with how the contemporary works in our exhibition have used materials in innovative ways to make functional and intriguing objects that are also deeply connected to the house, garden and the collections here at Chatsworth – a place where design has been a key feature for 500 years.”
Jane Marriott, director of Chatsworth House Trust, added: “These bold, inspiring and sometimes humorous works allow us to connect with the many stories at Chatsworth and to also reflect on the urgent issues of our time from our use of materials, sustainability and the climate crisis.
“As a charity, we are very proud to continue to commission and support artists and by doing so we make Chatsworth’s history come alive, while looking forward to the future.”
Lord Burlington, chair of the Chatsworth House Trust commented: “We are thrilled to bring Mirror Mirror and these 16 remarkable designers to Chatsworth, to continue the tradition of placing new objects and ideas in direct conversation with creative choices from generations past.
“With this exhibition – as well as a significantly enhanced programme of talks, tours and workshops – the aim is to ensure Chatsworth upholds its role as a gathering place and a resource for artists, thinkers, makers and learners.
“We look forward to welcoming them all in 2023.”
The exhibition was co-curated by Alex Hodby alongside writer, historian and curator Glenn Adamson.
By placing contemporary works in such proximity to historic design, it brings about unexpected connections between the house’s architecture, interiors, furniture and ceramics as well as the glass, stone and wood from its structure.
The 16 artists and designers featured in the exhibition are: Ini Archibong, Michael Anastassiades, Wendell Castle, Andile Dyalvane, Ndidi Ekubia, Najla El Zein, Formafantasma, Joris Laarman, Max Lamb, Fernando Laposse, Jay Sae Jung Oh, Samuel Ross, Chris Schanck, Ettore Sottsass, Faye Toogood, and Joseph Walsh.
About Chatsworth…
Located within the Peak District National Park, Chatsworth is home to the Devonshire family.
The estate comprises a Grade I listed house and stables, a 105-acre garden, a 1,822-acre park, a farmyard and adventure playground, plus one of Europe’s most significant private art collections.
Chatsworth is also a registered charity. The Chatsworth House Trust was established in 1981 to look after the house, collections, garden, woodlands and park for the benefit of everyone.
Chatsworth plays an important role in the local community as a thriving cultural and educational destination, a nationally important historic landscape, and a working estate that operates with a mindful approach to the environment and sustainability.
About Mirror Mirror…
Ini Archibong (b. 1983), USA and Switzerland
Location: Vestibule
Ini Archibong grew up in California and is now based in Switzerland. In 2016, he began collaborating with skilled glassblowers there to make monumental chandeliers.
Archibong’s chandelier Dark Vernus I (meaning Dark Spring), is a suspended gathering of vessel-like forms with a powerful spiritual presence.
It hangs in the Vestibule, a small space with a complex function. Allowing passage between the Great Dining Room and Sculpture Gallery, the Vestibule also houses a musicians’ gallery, which Archibong has brought back to life with his own custom-composed sound piece.
This vestibule also displays two nineteenth-century bronze busts of an African man and woman, by the French artist Charles-Henri Cordier.
The depictions are arrestingly beautiful, but also exoticised. Archibong chose not to address these problematic representations directly, instead his work literally rises above them.
Michael Anastassiades (b. 1967), UK
Location: Library
Michael Anastassiades is a London-based designer, known for his lithe yet commanding lighting structures.
It was during his childhood spent on the island of Cyprus that he first fell in love with light – ever present in that part of the world – and with ancient cultures.
His installation of light in the Library illuminates the room in depth. It is an indoor grove of bamboo, the stems carefully hand-finished according to a traditional Japanese method.
The bases are made of poured pewter, pooled around the bamboo to form fitted stands. Illuminated bulbs are attached with waxed linen thread.
Wendell Castle (1932-2018), USA
Location: Ring Pond
Wendell Castle (1932 – 2018) was arguably the leading American furniture designer of his generation, but he mostly thought of himself as a sculptor. Instead of using traditional joinery techniques, he created monumental and organic forms that are totally free from the logic of conventional furniture.
At Chatsworth, a trio of Castle’s works are gathered at the edge of a pool. All are three-person seats cast in bronze but with varying compositions.
In A New Seeing, the seats are cut through at odd angles, while in Illusion-Reality-Truth, they rest on vertical finger-like forms.
Temptation has a single long seat, riding like a boat over waves.
Castle’s bronze seats echo the forms of the yew trees surrounding the historic Ring Pond, providing welcome spaces to sit while also entering into a dialogue with the herms and stone stools, originally designed by William Kent for the garden at Chiswick – a connection across time to the origins of design as we understand it today.
Andile Dyalvane (b. 1978), South Africa
Location: Chapel Corridor
Widely considered one of South Africa’s foremost ceramic artists, Andile Dyalvane’s work is an acknowledgement and celebration of his ancestral past, his heritage and community.
His complex, large-scale ceramic artworks often feature symbolic pictograms and patterns, honouring the traditional practices of the Xhosa people.
At Chatsworth, Dyalvane has returned to the ideas he developed during a residency at Leach Pottery in St. Ives, when his vessels took on the shapes of crags overlooking the sea.
The transformative nature of clay to ceramic is celebrated in his works in the Chapel Corridor that are resonant with symbolism of fire, water and earth.
They take their place in the rich history of ceramic collecting and commissioning over hundreds of years at Chatsworth – from historic Delftware to Edmund de Waal’s 2007 site-specific piece a sounding line which sits alongside Dyalvane’s work.
Ndidi Ekubia (b. 1973), UK
Location: State Closet
British artist Ndidi Ekubia creates visually stimulating yet functional silverware that pushes the craft of metal-raising to its limits. Inspired by the idea of the flow of metals, her abstract vessels feature an all-over texture of hammered marks that create a rippling effect as if the metal were caught in liquid form.
For Chatsworth, Ekubia has created a custom suite of objects, with the graduated sizes of a garniture – a set of ceramics you sometimes see on historic mantelpieces.
Their reflective surfaces play off those of two large pier glasses (mirrors supplied to Chatsworth by John Gumley in 1703), and an impressive silver chandelier in the style of Daniel Marot.
In this stately company, Ekubia’s gleaming vessels introduce a note of vitality into the intimate space of the State Closet and enter into dialogue more broadly with the history of baroque ornamentation, in which material is given life through consummate craftsmanship.
Najla El Zein (b. 1983), France and Lebanon
Location: Rose Garden
Beirut-born Amsterdam-based designer Najla El Zein’s work explores the psychological potential of abstract form. Her abstract seating sculptures convey the emotional complexity of human relationships.
The formality of the Rose Garden – its geometric planting and arrangement of columns and sculpture – provides an intriguing setting for El Zein’s Seduction, Pair 06, a seating sculpture hand-carved in Iranian red travertine that conveys the sense of two bodies conjoined. El Zein offers visitors the chance to interact with the work by sitting on it and feeling its shapes and expressions.
FormaFantasma (founded 2009), Italy
Location: Green Satin Room
Formafantasma – an Italian design studio led by Andrea Trimarchi and Simone Farresin – respond to the challenge of climate change by researching old technologies, which may have something to teach us.
At Chatsworth, visitors see one of their earliest projects focusing on the all-but-forgotten craft of charcoal burning.
Formafantasma’s Charcoal series draws on the tension between the negative image of charcoal – its connections to pollution and destruction – and its positive potential in contexts like water filtration.
Made in collaboration with Swiss charcoal burner Doris Wicki – one of the last individuals dedicated to the tradition of producing charcoal by the slow burning of wood – along with glass blowers and wood carvers, the series features carbon filter variations and glass vessels.
The works are presented in the Green Satin Room alongside paintings of historic views of Chatsworth, where charcoal was once an important fuel source. This juxtaposition draws parallels across moments in the landscape, and the materials and tools that can be wrought from it.
Joris Laarman (b. 1979), The Netherlands
Location: Painted Hall; Salisbury Lawn
Dutch designer Joris Laarman uses new technologies to create functional, mathematically complex pieces that pay attention to the natural world around them.
Works in Laarman’s Maker series are all fabricated using digital tools and blueprints for one of his chairs were released online so that anyone could create their own versions.
Two of Laarman’s Maker Benches, digitally fabricated in wood, greet visitors in the Painted Hall. The intricate patterns of the two benches – mirror images of each other – reflect the historic chequered floor.
Stone quarried from the Chatsworth Estate and hand-carved by a local mason is used to make two new Symbio Benches by Laarman for the Salisbury Lawn in the garden.
These works host their own microhabitats in carved channels where a special cement encourages plant growth. Moss and lichen will take hold in these spaces, patterning the stone with texture and colour in a continual evolution over time.
Max Lamb (b. 1980), UK
Location: State Drawing Room
British designer Max Lamb is deeply concerned with the transformation of materials, and known for creating beautifully crafted pieces that have traditional processes at their core.
The contemporary chairs at Chatsworth are each made from a single piece of cedar, measuring six by eight inches in cross-section.
Lamb cut the beams on a band saw and put them together again like a puzzle ensuring no wood was wasted in the process.
His new work for the State Drawing Room is driven by research into the woodcarving in the room: lime wood trophies by Samuel Watson, and two coronation thrones by Catherine Naish, one of few female master carvers known from the eighteenth century.
Fernando Laposse (b. 1988), Mexico
Location: State Bedchamber
Fernando Laposse, who divides his time between London and Mexico, specialises in transforming humble natural materials into refined design pieces, working with overlooked plant fibres such as sisal, loofah, and corn leaves.
His cabinet and armchair with long fibres of agave, presented in the State Bedchamber, bring a powerful animacy to the opulent surroundings, creating a presence almost like that of living creatures.
The works directly references local people and cultures from which these materials originate and draws attention to the cultural, social and political mechanisms that underpin material economies. Laposse creates them in a Mexican village called Tonahuixtla, which has been devastated by climate change.
The primary material is sisal, the fibre of the agave plant – a type of succulent used in the production of tequila.
Laposse has pioneered the innovative use of this material in the region, where he is also organising an extensive planting of agave, with the goal of restoring the community’s economy.
Jay Sae Jung Oh (b. 1982), South Korea and USA
Location: State Music Room
Jay Sae Jung Oh is a Seattle-based designer from South Korea, who explores the intersection of art and design with distinctive and intricately made objects.
She makes her work mostly from found, discarded materials, building these objects into elaborate assemblages, which she wraps tightly with cord.
For Chatsworth’s State Music Room, Oh creates a new work within her long running series of furniture made by wrapping found objects with leather cord.
The decorations in the room include Jan Van Der Baard’s trompe l’oeil of a violin, painted directly on to the rear door of the room in 1723. In response, Oh has made a throne containing a number of broken musical instruments at its core, including a French horn, a snare drum, and an electric guitar.
Samuel Ross (b. 1991), UK
Location: Sculpture Gallery
The purpose-built 19th-century Sculpture Gallery at Chatsworth contains two important reclining sculptures: Filippo Albacini’s ‘Achilles’ (1825) and Antonio Canova’s ‘Endymion’ (1819 – 22).
British artist, designer and multidisciplinary creative director Samuel Ross responds to these lively-seeming but inert bodies, with works in stone and steel; their forms invite us to imagine the body that would recline on them.
They are made partly of marble, like the classical sculptures around them, and partly of steel, powder-coated in bright orange, which reflects Ross’ interest in modernism and results in a hybrid style that is vividly new.
Chris Schanck (b. 1975), USA
Location: The Grotto
Detroit-based designer Chris Schanck makes furniture from scraps of wood, metal, and foam, which he wraps in metallic foil and a clear coat of resin.
His seemingly calcified designs are wonders of transformation, in which upcycled scrap materials are turned into crystalline forms rendered in bright hues.
Two works are installed in the Grotto, their complex surfaces in harmony with the richly carved decoration.
The pieces connect with the historic features of the space – the watery surfaces refer to the nearby indoor fountain – and the crystalline forms resemble those of Chatsworth’s geological collections, a connection emphasised by the placement of mineral specimens inside Schanck’s cabinet Cryo C Cabinet.
Ettore Sottsass (1917-2007), Italy
Location: Great Chamber
A seminal figure in 20th-century design, the Italian architect and designer Ettore Sottsass (1917-2007) created a vast body of work during his six-decade career, including works in polychromatic glass that stage a radical intervention into this quintessentially Italian craft.
Though he had great respect for traditional glass-blowing, Sottsass departed from its
usual methods in surprising ways.
He used adhesives and wire to put his pieces together, and introduced striking angles. The resulting objects are abstract totems – spiritual, rather than functional, vessels. Displayed on historic furniture in the Great Chamber, they connect to the abundant glass in the space and exemplify the inventive approach that many contemporary designers have taken to historic crafts.
Faye Toogood (b. 1977), UK
Location: Chapel; Oak Room
Faye Toogood is a British artist working in a diverse range of disciplines, from sculpture to furniture and fashion.
Her installation of sculptural furniture for the Chapel in stone is a continuation of her latest collection Assemblage 7, in which the objects appear to be carefully excavated, as if by an archaeologist.
The pieces for The Chapel are made of Purbeck Marble, a limestone from Dorset with dense deposits of snail shell often used in English cathedrals in the middle ages.
But Toogood’s elemental forms look still further back, to Neolithic standing stones, drawing on local history of stone circles around Chatsworth.
In acknowledgement of the spiritual setting, Toogood has also provided a bronze pew and two chairs, giving visitors the chance to sit and contemplate.
For the adjoining Oak Room, decorated in panelling bought and installed by the 6th Duke of Devonshire (1790 – 1858) in the nineteenth century, Toogood has designed a suite of objects in oak and bog oak, connecting directly with both the material of the room and its use as a gathering space. The installation centres on a large carved oak table accompanied by two stools carved from bog oak (a special type of wood found in peat bogs, which has become extremely dark and dense over many years of submersion).
Joseph Walsh (b. 1979), Ireland
Location: West and South Sketch Galleries; Sabine Room
The innovative furniture of self-taught Irish furniture maker, artist and designer Joseph Walsh is organic and sinuous.
His studio on the family farm in County Cork is near to Lismore Castle, the Irish home of the Devonshire family, and Walsh had already completed several major works for Chatsworth before this exhibition was conceived.
The pieces on display at Chatsworth in the West and South Sketch Galleries are largely made using steam-bent wood.
The gravity-defying wall brackets are sculptures that also serve as supports for other objects, echoing the functional furniture used to display collected material throughout the galleries.
Each sinuous shape is built up from many thin layers of wood, which are then carved by hand.
The process is ancient – it was once used to make bows – but Walsh adapts it to create contemporary shapes. The brackets were custom-made for the Galleries to display ceramics from the collection.
The Enignum VIII Bed, arguably the most spectacular of Walsh’s creations for Chatsworth has been relocated to the Sabine Room for this exhibition to create a new dialogue with the surrounding wall and ceiling paintings by Sir James Thornhill from 1707.
