By Katie Dominy / 03-06-2010

The exhibition Sotheby’s at Sudeley Castle is arranged in association with London’s Carpenters Workshop Gallery and includes works by Marcel Wanders, Studio Makkink & Bey and Sebastian Brajkovic, as well as Studio Job, Demakersvan and Atelier Van Lieshout.

Sudeley Castle has been a famous home to nobility since Tudor times and boasts nine different gardens around the property. It is here that twenty five limited edition or unique works of design have been exhibited.

'TeaSceneryDeLuxe' has been created especially for Sotheby's at Sudeley Castle by Studio Makkink & Bey and is a play on Jurgen Bey's well-known 'Tree Trunk Bench', designed in 1999 for Droog. Composed of bronze, aluminum and found tree trunk, the piece is ideally located here in a woodland setting. The found wood trunk has two cast bronze chair backs, a side-table with aluminum fuel-burning drawer and an aluminum crate containing firewood. There is even a teapot, milk jug and two cup and saucers.

Highlights also include Studio Job’s 'Pouring Jug', a unique piece shown here for the first time. An over three-metre high polished and patinated bronze statue of a jug pours out a stream of black crystals as if into a pool.

Marcel Wanders’ 'Bon Bon Gold' created this year, is a one-metre wide low sofa-seat that gives the impression of gold-spun lace and is, in fact, created from resin, rope and precious metal. An intricate web of crocheted rope is cast in resin and then coated in precious metal, producing an outer shell that is solid and functional whilst appearing fragile.

Wanders describes Bon Bon Gold as, "a sugar-free giant eye-candy. It’s the frozen skeleton of an ancient mushroom, the phosphorescent fossil of a lacy hyper sponge. I want to blur the borders between the future and the past, the natural - and the artificial world, between wild plants and wild sculptures, because all live from the same stream of thought, all are inhaled through the same eyes, and stored in the same hearts." Designed in an edition of twenty, the piece is a variation on the designer’s well-known Crochet Chair for Droog in 2006.

Sebastian Brajkovic’s intertwined chairs entitled 'Lathe X' are made in aluminum in an edition of eight. 'Lathe X' is a continuation of the designer’s Lathe series that evolved from his graduation project at Design Academy Eindhoven, where studies of antique chairs are reworked in the computer to create new versions that play on the detailing and shapes of the past in a new way.

'Cinderella Table' in Carrara marble sits by itself on an immaculate English lawn and is the work of Demakersvan, a studio made up of twins Jeroen and Joep Verhoeven, plus Judith de Graauw. 'Cinderella Table' is a twist on the 18th century console table, traditionally worked in solid metal. Using high-tech cutting equipment, marble appears to have the tensile strength of metals, with strong shadows and silhouettes formed by the negative and positive spaces. The studio comment: 'High tech machines are our hidden Cinderellas...'Cinderella Table' is about attention to detail and the possibility of making something unique with an intelligent machine that is normally used for mass production.' The work was also shown in the Telling Tales: Fantasy and Fear in Contemporary Design exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London last year.

From Atelier van Lieshout, works include the infamous 'Wellness Skull' from 2007 and also 'Utopian Dog House' from 2002 – a one metre high dog’s house on stilts designed for the luxury pet market. Created from fiberglass and wood, the house includes a feeding area and several interior spaces. All in dull brown, the eye is drawn to a red blob attached to the right of the piece, which is designated a sleeping zone. This work was originally conceived for the Busan biennale in Korea, where dogs are often a feature of national cuisine.

Prices range from £10,000 to £250,000.

Sotheby's at Sudeley Castle is on show from 28 May until 1 August 2010.

Main image: Atelier van Lieshout
Images: Sudeley Castle, Demakersvan, Studio Job, Sebastian Brajkovic, Marcel Wanders, Studio Makkink & Bey

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