Traditional Home October 2006
Traditional Home
October 2006
Into the Woods
The call of the wild lures today’s artists and designers
by Akiko Busch
New York furniture and accessories designer Carole Gratale investigates a different rusticity in pieces inspired by 20th-century metal master Diego Giacometti. “He was a master of scale,” she explains, “and I stayed as close as I could to the originals.” A side table cast in bronze reiterates a delicate armature of branches; a coatrack has been rendered as a graceful sapling. “We all seem to resonate with a sense of nature,” adds Gratale. Like the sapling itself, the cast bronze conveys a simultaneous lightness and strength, and in doing so, may explain the richness of such woodland imagery: The beauty of a single leaf is a lesson in transience, while a branch reveals that suppleness and strength are natural compatriots.
“Giacometti Coat Tree Rack,” $4,425, Carole Gratale through John Rosselli (212/593-2060).