In a New Show, Laerke Ryom Approaches Upholstery Like a High-Fashion Couturier.
If you were paying attention, there are two pieces in Danish designer Laerke Ryom’s portfolio that might have clued you in to the direction she was headed. The first is a boxy, four-legged chair covered in chocolate brown canvas, its open flaps tied neatly with a ladder of bows. The second is a brick-red leather lounger, fastened with buckles, that the designer made in collaboration with Fredericia; its nearest aesthetic counterpart isn’t another piece of Danish modern furniture, but one of the new crop of bomber jackets by the likes of Khaite or Phoebe Philo. Now the designer is the subject of a solo exhibition at the brand-new Copenhagen gallery Innenkreis, founded by former Étage Projects gallery director Zeynep Rekkali Jensen. Innenkreis is dedicated to presenting functional artworks in conversation with pre-1940 decorative arts, and Ryom’s pieces — situated alongside 19th-century vernacular forms and early works by Josef Hoffman — make for a poetic first presentation.
Like her previous works, Ryom’s new collection, entitled Raiments, uproots our traditional conception of upholstery. Where traditional upholstery uses tension to stretch textiles into a strict form, Ryom works more like a tailor, the cut and drape of the fabric being a key to revealing the structure underneath. For this show, Ryom made six original works: three seats and three lights dressed in Kvadrat wool, ranging from a piano bench to a sconce. Each piece features a hand-stitched quilted pattern with contrast piping; the seats’ textiles are buttoned on the underside and each panel ends in a slight flare. The whole effect is very fashion, but Ryom was thinking more about chafing against the rules of modernism than chasing runway ideals when designing her collection. “I was educated within the language of Danish functionalist Modernism, where structure is often seen as truth, and textile as ornament,” says Ryom. “My work suggests a shift where softness is not surface, but substance, and where textile and frame meet as equals.”