Royal Selangor’s latest tableware collection exemplifies a modern take on a traditional material.
A CENTURY-old company, synonymous with craft heritage, joins forces with award-winning designers to push design boundaries. The upshot: a stunning collection of pewter tableware named Landscape.
The collection is a collaboration between Royal Selangor and international design practice VW+BS to fashion everyday objects like trays, bowls, tea caddies and candleholders from the age-old metal alloy.
Alluding to natural forms and phenomena, a tray dubbed Track is suggestive of sand dunes with ridges carved by a receding tide; the anthropomorphic Wave bowls are redolent of women’s sensuous curves while the Erosion bowls, a set of six angular-shaped dishes, when put together form the contours of a mountain range.
Sculptural yet functional, these objects reflect modern sensibilities that resonate with contemporary lifestyles.
Design approach
“What interests us about this collaboration is that pewter is a traditional material often perceived as quite dowdy,” says Voon Wong of VW+BS, at the launch of Landscape at Space Furniture Kuala Lumpur recently.
“So we wanted to do something contemporary with an old material and old processes.”
Wong, a Singaporean, and Penang-born Benson Saw make up the creative sparks behind the multi-disciplinary firm. The third partner, Brit Ian Macready, oversees the practice’s design marketing and sales. With offices in London, Singapore and Kuala Lumpur, VW+BS’s impressive portfolio lists over 150 architectural, interior and product design projects in Europe, Asia and Australia.
Drawing on their backgrounds in architecture, product design and engineering, VW+BS has garnered multiple accolades for their works, which include their iconic Loop Lamp. Manufactured by Italian lighting company FontanaArte, the Lamp was shortlisted for the prestigious Compasso d’Oro (the Oscars of the design world) in 2004. Their recent design of the Upper Class bar and cabin interior for Virgin Atlantic Airways clinched the FX 2012 Product Design of the Year awarded by FX International Interior Design Awards (FX magazine is a leading, global interior design publication for the contract industry).
VW+BS’s products and projects have graced the pages of international design publications like Wallpaper*, Monocle, Architectural Digest, and Elle Decoration.
Not bound by a specific “look” or fixed aesthetics, the duo constantly explores materials and processes, both age-old and cutting-edge. In 2007, they launched their collection of bone china tableware, Setcast, by teaming up with China-based Asianera; the high-quality bone china manufacturer’s clients include Alessi and Shanghai Tang.
“Through these explorations, we understand, and learn about the constraints of, these materials and processes which then spur ideas for different projects,” explains Kuala Lumpur-based Saw.
For instance, a cursory glance at the Crease tray from Landscape reminds one of the Crease bowl from their bone china collection. A closer look reveals how the different materials affect the forms and their light-reflecting properties.
“Pewter has been used since medieval times in Europe and Royal Selangor has been producing pewter since 1885. But it hasn’t been used so much (barring decorative objects) in recent times so we thought it would be interesting to work with the material,” says London-based Wong who relished the idea of working with a heritage brand like Royal Selangor with its strong history of producing high-quality pewter products.
“Besides, I grew up knowing about Royal Selangor (then Selangor Pewter) since my dad has a few tankards in his collection,” he adds, chuckling.
Wong and Saw started with a vague idea of doing natural forms and ferreting out the inherent qualities of pewter – its malleability, versatility and warmth.
VW+BS’s affinity for modular systems is obvious in their design for Erosion bowls and past works like the SliceBox coffee table and C Shelves for Decode, a British design and manufacturing company.
“Modularity is something we’ve always been interested in,” says the Architectural Association-trained Wong. “To pull something apart so they have several functions and when they come together they perform a different function.
“Working with pewter for the first time has been a very educational process,” says the designer who has worked with glass, stone, metal and wood.
“The material confounds our expectations of what metal does because we always think we form or mill metal but actually these pewter objects are cast,” he explains.
“The beauty of casting is you can achieve varying thickness for the material and hence create something three dimensional and sculptural. It has challenged the way we view this material.”
Metal casting also allows the designers to incorporate intricate details like sharp edges or curves with tight radii, Saw adds.
“With wood or ceramic or glass, one can’t achieve that because the material is brittle and will chip easily,” says Saw who studied furniture design at London’s prestigious Royal College of Arts.
Ideas for products kept rolling off their drawing boards.
“We started with a lot more products but through a process of editing, some weren’t feasible due to weight, scale or complexity, and were left on the cutting room floor,” says Wong.
Some items, like the three-pronged Clover candleholder, underwent various incarnations and tweaks, such as thicker walls and longer prongs. The Pillar tea caddy and sugar bowl were later additions.
“Working with Royal Selangor was a great experience as the craftsmen have been absolutely skilful and meticulous in fabrication the tableware,” Saw raves.
Ultimately, Wong and Saw hope to demonstrate that contemporary designs can be applied to old material. “The (pewter-making) process has remained unchanged and has not been mechanized in many ways, so this collection is the marriage of something handcrafted and something modern,” says Wong. “And it also demonstrates that these two worlds can co-exist.”
Talent hookups
Since the late 1970s when Royal Selangor formalised its design department, the company has teamed up with designers, in-house and externally, to develop innovative pewter designs. Collaborations with international designers like Dane Erik Magnussen, Brit Nick Munro and Hong Kong native Freeman Lau have thrust the company onto the global design map.
The company’s wine funnel, under its Wine Celebration range, clinched the coveted Red Dot Award for Product Design from Germany’s Design Zentrum and the Japan’s Good Design award. Magnussen’s tableware range snagged the Design Plus Award at the Frankfurt International Gift Fair in 1989 and his hip flask won the Design Plus Award in 1991.
Today, Royal Selangor’s design studio employs 30 staff comprising product designers, sculptors, graphic designers, packaging designers, and prototype makers.
“We have always liked collaborating with designers as it challenges our product development team to look at pewter in a different light,” says Yong Yoon Li, executive director of Royal Selangor International.
“Besides, designers who don’t work with pewter on a daily basis bring a different viewpoint to our company.”
In the case of Landscape, VW+BS was given carte blanche to design a collection of products around the home and office.
“They were given a free rein to come up with something out of this world,” says Yong, the fourth generation in the family business.
The Moon lamp is Royal Selangor’s first venture into making lights, utilising pewter in combination with wood. A pewter sheet lining the cavity of a square wooden chassis reflects the LED bulb to create a crescent moon effect.
Of the Landscape collection, Yong says, “One of my favourite pieces is the Erosion which I feel is a statement piece for us. But I had to convince our sales team to include Erosion in the collection. Our sales team works on historical data and said ‘in our experience with such things, we don’t sell many of these…’ ”
Because of their distinct angles, shapes and sculptural forms, each Landscape object is painstakingly handcrafted.
To date, Royal Selangor has unveiled the collection at international design and trade shows like 100% Design London, 100% Design Singapore, and the Spring Fair International in Birmingham, Britain, Europe’s leading home and gift trade fair.
“In our realm, heritage, quality and craftsmanship, these are a given. And we’ve always valued design in our brand essence,” Yong says. “We will always continue speaking with people like VW+BS to come up with evocative and consistently good, enduring designs.”
As for Landscape, “It’s a global product for people who enjoy good, contemporary design,” Yong sums up.
The Landscape collection by VW+BS for Royal Selangor is priced from RM280 to RM1,900 and is available at all Royal Selangor retail stores, authorised dealers and online at royalselangor.com.
Royal Selangor melds heritage and design in latest collection
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