Martino’s Shop
Berlino Bench 2004 Reclaimed furniture, wood Berlino Bench 2004 Reclaimed furniture, wood Berlino Bench 2004 Reclaimed furniture, wood Berlino Bench 2004 Reclaimed furniture, wood Berlino Bench 2004 Reclaimed furniture, wood
The Skulk of Foxes 2002 Various dimensions Timber, mdf, found wood, handrails, table legs, hinges, screws, fox fur stickers Edition of 12 The Skulk of Foxes 2002 Various dimensions Timber, mdf, found wood, handrails, table legs, hinges, screws, fox fur stickers Edition of 12 The Skulk of Foxes 2002 Various dimensions Timber, mdf, found wood, handrails, table legs, hinges, screws, fox fur stickers Edition of 12 The Skulk of Foxes 2002 Various dimensions Timber, mdf, found wood, handrails, table legs, hinges, screws, fox fur stickers Edition of 12 The Skulk of Foxes 2002 Various dimensions Timber, mdf, found wood, handrails, table legs, hinges, screws, fox fur stickers Edition of 12 The skulk is ready to be shipped to Bloomberg The Log 2002 Cardboard tube, foam, leather, suede, mdf, screws 50 x 40 x 500cm, Unique The Log 2002 Cardboard tube, foam, leather, suede, mdf, screws 50 x 40 x 500cm, Unique The Log found a shelter at the film shop on Broadway Market, London April 2004 The Rabbit 2002 Printed fabric, styrene pellets, zip, thread 400 x 300 x 80cm, Unique The Rabbit 2002 Printed fabric, styrene pellets, zip, thread 400 x 300 x 80cm, Unique The Rabbit Head Amalgam Bench 2002 Chairs, metal wire, mdf, wood pattern tape 180 x 65 x 50cm, Unique Amalgam Bench 2002 Chairs, metal wire, mdf, wood pattern tape 180 x 65 x 50cm, Unique Wood Tape 2000 Custom printed wood tape 50 x 500cm, Edition of 144. The Amalgam furniture were first made from packing tape bought at french fashion label A.P.C. For the ‘second generation’, Martino had his own design printed on tape
Invite Corner Bench 06 2004 Mdf, timber, screws 1200 × 1000 x 430mm, Unique Corner Bench 06 2004 Mdf, timber, screws 1200 × 1000 x 430mm, Unique David and Vicky’s CD Shelf 2004 Mdf, chipboard, teak timber 160 × 600 x 450mm, Unique Engraved Table 2004 Teak timber, softwood, mdf 500 × 1200 x 810mm, Unique Engraved Table 2004 Teak timber, softwood, mdf 500 × 1200 x 810mm, Unique Martino live routing Four Seater Empty Chairs 2004 Chipboard 50 × 450 x 600mm, Unique Four Seater Empty Chairs 2004 Chipboard 50 × 450 x 600mm, Unique Four Seater Empty Chairs 2004 Chipboard 50 × 450 x 600mm, Unique Four Seater Empty Chairs 2004 Chipboard 50 × 450 x 600mm, Unique Four Seater Empty Chairs 2004 Chipboard 50 × 450 x 600mm, Unique
Exhibition View Continental Armchair 2002 Custom-made cushion 50 x 65 x 120cm, Unique Napoleon Chair 2002 Chair, Victorian handrail, chemistry clamps, heat sensitive fabric 50 x 65 x 70cm, Unique Anton Chair 2002 45 x 45 x 60cm Chair, Victorian hand rail, timber and plywood, Unique Barbarossa Mini Bar 2002 Cabinet, hinges, granite, timber and plywood 40 x 40 x 110cm, Unique Barbarossa Mini Bar 2002 40 x 40 x 110cm Cabinet, hinges, granite, timber and plywood, Unique Yoichi Coffee Table 2002 Handrail, glass 40 x 40 x 30cm, Unique Toby Coffee Table 2002 Handrail, floor slab, Unique Josephine Coffee Table 2002 Victorian handrail, glass, handrail 40 x 45 x 30cm, Unique Salvador Clock Table 2002 Clock, timber and plywood 50 x 50 x 30cm, Unique Dinah Stool 2002 Light, door handles, seat, timber and plywood 45 x 45 x 90cm, Unique Cherry Chair 2002 Cherry timber, handle, timber and plywood 30 x 40 x 90cm, Unique Suzy Chair 2002 Office chair, custom screen printed wooden slaps, re-upholstered back 45 x 45 x 70cm, Unique
Horse Table 01 2002 Table legs, table tops 550 × 650 x 850mm, Unique Horse Table 02 2002 Table legs, table tops, timber and plywood 550 × 650 x 850mm, Unique Box and a Stick Stools 2002 Cherry timber, curtain rail 400 × 2000 x 500mm, Unique Adam and Charlotte Bench 2002 Table, chair back 400 × 600 x 750mm, Unique Hanging Box Kitchen Trolley 2002 Chair base, coatstand, wooden box 300 x 1500 x 450mm, Unique Hold-on Vase 2002 Vacuum flask, chemistry clamps, wood 150 x 300 x 180mm, Unique Split Chair 2002 Chair, mdf 500 x 700 x 750mm, Unique Long Bench 2002 Chair, cherry timber 700 x 2000 x 850mm, Unique Dagmar Chair 2002 Chair frame, curtain rails 500 × 500 x 750mm, Unique Three-legged Table 2002
Exhibition View Wendy & Jim Folding Chairs 2003 Folding chairs, velvet fabric, foam 450 × 450 x 750mm, Unique Black on White Coffee Table 2003 Chair seats, timber and plywood 500 x 450 x 430mm, Unique Susanna Chair 2003 Chair, upholstered timber armrest 460 × 460 x 680mm, Unique Rosso Nero 2003 Chairs, plywood 500 × 500 x 670mm, Unique Libero Chair 2003 Chair, chair seat, chemistry clamps, upholstered seat 450 × 450 x 680mm, Unique Vespa-ino Chair 2003 Vespa Yankee seat, chair 600 × 300 x 650mm, Unique Top of the Stick Chair 2003 Chair, coat hanger base, metal 400 × 400 x 1500mm, Unique Skirt Chair 2003 chair, fabric, foam, plywood seat, spray paint 450 × 450 x 650mm, Unique
Walking Carpet Stamp Walking Carpet Flipflops 2003, Carpet, leather, rivets Edition of 80
Coming Home Football Lamp 2006 Custom made football, compact fluorescent light bulb, cable 20 x 20 x 20cm Coming Home Football Lamp 2006 Custom made football, compact fluorescent light bulb, cable 20 x 20 x 20cm Exhibition View Design Museum, London Exhibition View Design Museum, London Table Football Competition, Cafe Kick, London Table Football Competition, Cafe Kick, London The Winners, Cafe Kick, London Coming Home T-Shirt and Lamp
FWUW in action FWUW Bench 2001 Cantilevered chair, table-top 500 × 1800 x 700mm, Unique Michael’s FWUW CD Shelf 2001 Timber, veneered mdf, chipboard, hinges 350 × 750 x 160mm, Unique FWUW Drawer-table 2001 Drawer, plywood 400 × 450 x 380mm, Unique FWUW Drawer-table 2001 Bed frame, timber and plywood 1700 × 550 x 680mm, Unique FWUW Guitar-seat 2001 Guitar, chair base 400 × 420 x 650mm, Unique Eddie’s FWUW Tennis-table 2001 Wooden roller shutter, tennis racket, door pan 350 × 480 x 320mm, Unique FWUW Rockin’chair 2001 Chair, plywood 450 × 500 x 650mm, Unique FWUW blue table 2001 Laminated lab tops 1000 × 1300 x 870mm, Unique FWUW Double-sided-chair 2001 Chair, timber and plywood 500 × 450 x 600mm, Unique The street workshop in a little dark back street in East London

Berlino Bench

2004
Berlin, De

A summer bench in Berlino made with Rainer Spehl.

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Woodlands

2002
Bloomberg Headquarters, London, Uk
With Rainer Spehl & åbäke

Four Degrees of Together-ness by Karl-Johan Dykinte, 2004

Don’t you always believe graphic designers, especially if they tell you ‘We even make furniture’—double emphasis on the even, to stress there is more. In these days of Breaking the Boundaries of Not only Multi-disciplinary But Plurally Talented/Can sing Too-ness, these words are easily pronounced. I can predict the return of special skills, the hyper narrow savoir faire as a reaction to those who pretend being able to cabinet-make while designing typography. Please allow me to study the case of Woodlands, a joint project between furniture designers Martino Gamper, Rainer Spehl and graphic designers Åbäke. Woodlands is a series of semi-public furniture commissioned by design curators Scarlet Projects in the summer of 2002. The place is the Bloomberg UK
headquarters, in London. In this fancy building, there is no escape. The employees have four screens each and are informed in the staircases and in the toilets by invisible speakers. The nature of what they do —a mystery to me— necessitates it. The information is too important to miss any of it. There is a space, tho’, on each of the four floors to display functional design: a place to sit on ‘experimental’ furniture. Why this interests me is because the four sub-projects, developed for each of the four spaces constitute different examples of collaborations; an all-too democratic and genteel word used to define what is very often the best way to get cheap labour by unscrupulous people.

Floor one, the Tape Woods.
A few years back, Martino had started his Amalgam series by going to the then trendy A.P.C. shop where he bought some camouflage tape to amalgamate pieces of furniture. After a while, he opted to make his own ‘fake wood’ tape of which were rolls and rolls left when the Scarlet/Bloomberg commission happened. It might be worth mentioning the overall idea was to loosely bring nature into an artificial space. So they went scavenging to try and transform the broken & ugly into the new & pretty. Although it seems that in this instance, Martino set the rules while others executed, the varying results, from Flash Gordon the Movie props to decent 3 digit priced pieces showed they all might have had fun. Here, there can be some satisfaction in playing by someone elses rules.

Floor two, the Skulk of Foxes.
A few months back, Åbäke had started their Fox-objects series by printing fox-fur stickers to ‘cover’ objects. So they went scavenging to try and transform the broken & ugly into the new & pretty. Although it seems that in this instance, Åbäke set the rules while others executed, the varying results, from kids toys made by kids to tables I could swear were alive showed they all might have had fun. Here again, there can be some satisfaction in playing by someone elses rules.

Floor three, the Log.
For this one, nobody seems to remember who said ‘log’ in a meeting –or did someone say tree trunk? For the sake of demonstration and because it matters little, I decide Rainer said it. By then the 6 had already shifted most of the budget to this floor and the next because the foxes and the tape woods had minimal cost. They could allow themselves with something a bit more expensive. Once the L-word was agreed on, Rainer and Martino set off drawing it and involved ‘Clive the upholsterer’ to make the leather finish. In this collaboration, an idea is thrown in the middle of the committee and it gets naturally executed by a skilled craftsman. Because of its furniture-like nature, one could quite rightly assume that it is more of a Rainer and Martino piece.

Floor four, the Rabbit.
As all the other floor are featuring seats, this one did too. The Rabbit, which is four by three meters long has been sewn on a small machine which luckily didn’t break. It might have been a reaction to the hard log but this huge beanbag was surely soft. The fabric was hand drawn and featured a few animal faces mixed with furry surfaces. In principle, one could make animals with different body shapes. It worked as long as there was an eye or a beak where the head should be on the toy. The fact this piece of furniture is a flabby bean bag and print oriented makes it the perfect candidate for graphic designer to try out some ‘furniture design’. This being possible, of course, under the guidance of Royal College of Art-trained guys like Martino and Rainer. I am not saying it is easier but ok, it is.

All opinions expressed are mine.

www.rainerspehl.com www.abake.fr















Furniture I've Always Wanted To Make

27 – 28 March 2004
M + R Gallery, London, Uk













We Make Remake - Petrified

2002
Retrovius, London, Uk

Immediately after the second Village Fete, Rainer and Martino started to develop more and more what they now called the We Make Remake project. Within 6 months (Autumn–Winter 2002), they have ‘re-made’, exhibited and sold more than 50 unique pieces of furniture.

All the pieces shown are from Petrified, a show organised by Retrouvius, an Architectural Reclamation and Design partnership formed by Adam Hills and Maria Speake, ‘working for the past decade to promote salvage and re-use’.

www.rainerspehl.com www.retrouvius.com













We Make Remake










Waste to Taste

13 – 21 February 2003
Sotheby's, London, Uk

Before the end of Petrified, Martino and Rainer were commissioned to make unique pieces for the Waste to Taste exhibition at Sotheby’s Contemporary Show 2003

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Walking Carpet

Eddie Mundy and Martino Gamper’s carpet flip flop stall at the 2003 V&A Village Fete
(Martino takes the photo while Eddie convinces a potential customer).






Coming Home

2002
Made in collaboration with Rainer Spehl

In 2002, the world cup matches filled the pubs. Meanwhile, Martino and Rainer Spehl designed the football lamp; a limited edition of 100 specially manufactured football lights. After a nice display at the London Design Museum, the first Table Football Competition under the Football Lamp Chandelier was played at Café Kick in Hoxton. Twelve teams participated but DEATH (Nic Barba and Sean Murphy) ultimately embraced Victory which came with a lamp and a t-shirt for each member of the team.

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Furniture While You Wait

2001
Workshop at the Victoria and Albert Museum's Village Fête, London, Uk

Martino and Friends by Claire Catterall 2004

Furniture While U Wait, 2001
Among the various stalls on rickety trestle tables at the Victoria & Albert Museum’s Village Fete in 2001, Martino Gamper and Rainer Spehl set up shop making Furniture While U Wait. They had spent the previous two weeks scavenging for odd bits and pieces of wood, abandoned furniture and other old junk including a guitar, a tennis racket, roller skates and a football. It turns out to be a blisteringly hot day. Martino and Rainer busily get to work hammering odd pieces of wood and found objects together — cannibalising, rearranging, juxtaposing, and reassembling—to punter’s specifications. What emerges is a strange hybrid of office furniture, G-plan and Victorian drawing room, with an odd leg that on closer inspection turns out to be a skittle. The stall is a runaway success—Ron Arad insists on doing a turn as cabinetmaker; the V&A buys a couple of pieces for its Permanent Collection; Stephen Bayley gives Furniture While U Wait the Fete’s prestigious ‘Most Witty Stall’ award. In the searing heat, and inundated with orders, Martino accidentally cuts his hand and faints. But even this fails to dampen spirits and production continues at a rapid pace.
Just what is it about these pieces of furniture that makes them so appealing? Is it the memories they evoke—the chair leg that reminds you of schooldays; the upholstery that takes you back to your grandmother’s front room; the plastic seat that you’ve seen a million times in various church halls and waiting rooms? Or perhaps it’s the strange and sometimes surreal juxtaposition of elements—the guitar used as a seat back with an office chair on wheels, or the tubular steel cantilever frame teamed with a cabriole leg and brass claw foot. Maybe it has something to do with the way they’re produced—part factory assembly line, part game of Exquisite Cadaver, part drive-through takeaway. Or maybe it’s the spontaneity of the process, the way that something will be created in a matter of minutes. More likely it’s quite simply all of the above, and, of course, the idea that furniture can be ‘born’ rather than ‘designed’.

By the end of the day a large family of furniture has amassed roundthe stall, replacing the piles of wood, pieces of junk and second hand furniture that had been there before. It’s a collection of odd misfits, precarious pairings, and uncomfortable angles—stray creatures waiting to be claimed and taken home by their new owners.Has the V&A put the pieces they bought for their Permanent Collection on display? ‘No, we’re not quite sure what to do with them—they’re still in our office. We use them every day, though. They’re more like old friends.’