Furniture designer – and former Monday Muse – Lara Bohinc’s chair collection celebrates the curves of the female body in all their fleshy detail. Composed of a wooden structure and voluptuous foam layers upholstered in soft wool, the Big Girl Chair gives the sitter a giant embrace – making it the perfect, indulgent gift for Mother’s Day.
Motherhood has long been a central theme for the artist Clementine Keith Roach, who began making plaster casts of her own body while pregnant with her first child. Intrigued by her rapidly changing breasts, she began moulding casts of them onto large terracotta vessels sourced from Europe. On our Mother’s Day wish list is her sculpture “New Mourning (I),” 2022, featuring casts of her breasts the day after she stopped breastfeeding. Made from jesmonite, wood and steel, the figures hold up a vessel of what appears to be milk.
“The sculpture marks the separation of mother and child during weaning as both a time of grief and a new beginning,” says the Dorset-based artist. It evokes the dualities of motherhood and all the rich emotional experiences it entails.
£1,500
Men’s jewellery is a burgeoning business. As new lines are launched and the options become ever wider, The Wick brings you some of its favourites, including The Rose Pendant from Bleue Burnham, a man ahead of the game. The London designer founded his eponymous fine jewellery line in 2018. After being taught the basics of wax modelling, he became hooked, first making pieces for himself, then for friends, then their friends, and so on. Mixing a sense of British modernity with a playful spirit, his necklaces, rings and bracelets are handmade in London from recycled precious metals. This pendant (a unisex design) captures the rose’s fluid beauty, with its baguette-cut Sapphire presented in a free-formed setting.
£2,460
Louis Vuitton’s new men’s fine jewellery line is an ode to the grandson of Louis Vuitton himself. Gaston-Louis Vuitton led the label for 30 years and is remembered as an inventor and discerning collector – characteristics that the collection, Les Gaston Vuittons, encapsulates. Louis Vuitton has developed a new dark-blue titanium for the line that reflects both raw denim and the navy tones in a classic wardrobe. It acts as a foil to the timeless yellow gold bands of this minimalist ring – for those who aren’t shy of an LV monogram.
£2,200
Forget the fusty family crest. London hand-engraver and jeweller Castro Smith has reinvented the signet ring for the modern man – and woman – by taking cues from history, myths and biology. He uses the ancient technique of seal engraving to create designs that feel much more three-dimensional than a typical signet ring and mixes European and Japanese styles and craftsmanship to create his wildly elaborate pieces. Smith is a man in demand and his wait list for bespoke rings is currently closed, but we’d be happy with this beautiful Koi Carp design featuring white rhodium, rose gold, and black rhodium engravings.
Two Italian design giants have joined forces to bring some celestial magic to our homes. Poltrona Frau has teamed up with Fornasetti to reimagine one of its furniture standouts, the Vanity Fair XC armchair, which first debuted in 1930. The chair has been given a surreal transformation with an illustration from the Fornasetti archive, designed by Piero Fornasetti in the 1950s and given a contemporary spin by his son, Barnaba. A sun and moon rises over swirling clouds in the silk-screened design, produced in 50 individually numbered editions. To sit in the chair is to float among clouds.
£20,000
As its name suggests, this ever-changing light and sound sculpture is the second turntable designed by the musician, composer and artist Brian Eno – the first collaboration with Paul Stolper gallery was so successful, it was scaled up and used as the stage at U2’s Las Vegas Sphere residency. Currently on show at the London gallery (until 9 March), Turntable II comprises a round platter and base that change colour independently, phasing through combinations of generative “colourscapes”. The patterns of light and the speed at which they change are programmed to alter at random. Produced in a signed edition of 150, it can play both 33 and 45rpm vinyl but when it isn’t in use, it still performs as an ambient sculpture. “It’s the softness of these colours and the way they merge with each other that is so seductive,” Eno explains. We couldn’t agree more.
£2,500
State your intentions with an 18 carat gold pendant declaring “I Wanna Be Yours”. It comes courtesy of jewellery designer Stephen Webster and literary legend John Cooper Clarke. Webster has been a fan of the poet since he shot to prominence in the 1970s, becoming one of the most prolific artists of the Punk years. The pair later became friends, with Cooper Clarke penning “Solid Gold Geezer” in Webster’s honour. The capsule collection of handcrafted pendants takes cues from Cooper Clarke’s famous poem “I Wanna Be Yours,” in which everyday objects are transformed into declarations of love. One-liner extracts are etched in coloured enamel on the pendants, which feature an A and B side, much like a vinyl record, and are suspended from a metal chain that gives a nod to Cooper Clarke’s trademark pocket watch, tucked into his pocket at all times.
£235
Hand-crafted in the finest cow leather, this cross-body bag gets our pulses racing. Italian designer Maria Marigliano Caracciolo made her name by making bespoke book-shaped clutch bags, handcrafted in a traditional Neopolitan bookbindery and beloved by many a model and movie star, before broadening her By M. collections to include homewares and other bag designs. The limited-edition Lionheart was conceived as a tribute to the reign of Queen Elizabeth II.
