Wednesday, January 2, 2008

Robber Baron Series By STUDIO JOB


MANTEL CLOCK



CABINET




STANDING LAMP




TABLE


JEWEL SAFE


Robber Baron Series - Tales of POWER, CORRUPTION, ART, & INDUSTRY. Cast in bronze - by Studio Job

The Robber Baron series by Studio Job is an important suite of five cast-bronze furnishings, consisting of a Cabinet, Mantel Clock, Table, Standing Lamp, and Jewel Safe, each to be offered in a limited edition of five.

"Magnificent in scale, [...] the series reflects the outrageous excesses of America’s 19
th century tycoons and Russia’s new oligarchs. These surreal, highly-expressive furnishings, each a complex composition of multiple visual elements depicting a narrative - much like a cathedral’s stained glass windows or its majestic bronze front doors - represent an interior belonging to a powerful industrial leader or his heirs. With clouds of pollution belching from towering smoke stacks, and missiles, falcons, gas masks, warplanes, and wrenches adorning golden surfaces, Robber Baron celebrates and shames both Art and Industry." mossonline.com


About Studio Job (source, dezeen.com) : Graduates of the renowned Design Academy Eindhoven, the Netherlands, Job Smeets (b.1970, Belgium) and Nynke Tynagel (b. 1977, the Netherlands), who both live as well as work together, form Studio Job.

From the beginning, their collaboration resulted in highly expressive, usually one-off or limited-edition
artisan works, often cast in bronze or, later, finely constructed in laser-cut inlaid woods.

Employing iconographic, pan-historic imagery which can be in the same moment both heraldic as well as cartoon-like, the results are consistently monumental and yet somehow primitive, and generally read
neo-baroque, clearly fantasist, and certainly more mannerist than modernist.

Projecting a strong narrative quality, suggesting often a heroic battle between good and evil, their gorgeous collections seem born more from a medieval, guild-like process than an industrial approach.

Although, by definition, their work has primarily been geared to collectors and museums, Studio Job has collaborated successfully with various like-minded industrial
manufacturers, including Swarovski, Austria, and Koninklijke Tichelaar Makkum and Moooi, the Netherlands.

Their work has been shown internationally in numerous museums, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, the
Central Museum, Utrecht, the Dutch Textile Museum, Tilburg, and the Groninger Museum, Groningen.

Quick Note: The term "robber baron" dates back to the twelfth & thirteenth centuries, originally referring to certain feudal lords of land through which the Rhine River in Europe flowed. The term was again used in the early twentieth century referring to the economic princes of the day, AKA billionaires.

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