For this year’s London Design Festival, London-based design studio PINCH, founded by Russell Pinch and Oona Bannon, is launching a new limited-edition table called Nim. Nim will be presented as part of a special installation featuring the brand’s signature pieces at Rochelle School in the heart of East London, part of the burgeoning Shoreditch Design Triangle. This is, however, the first time Rochelle School has been a London Design Festival venue and is set to be a must-see destination during the week.
The Rochelle School, a cluster of three Victorian buildings erected in the 1880s, is now home to a thriving community of graphic designers, architects, media companies, fashion brands, artists and the Rochelle Canteen restaurant run by Margot Henderson.
As well as hosting PINCH for London Design Festival, the Rochelle School will be home to The Souvenir Project, an exhibition commissioned by Irish Design 2015 and curated by Jonathan Legge, Co-Founder of Makers & Brothers. Rochelle Canteen will also be open daily during the Festival serving breakfast, lunch and dinner.
About Nim
An exploration of texture and form, Nim references lava strata, stone and weather. The table has been created using Jesmonite and captures all the movement, power, potential and beauty of the natural world expressed as a new man made object. The result is a sculptural table with an impressive solidity, floating on a raised foot and featuring a recessed top.
With Nim, PINCH have sought to create a coffee table that references a core sample from the earth, with rough eroded textured sides flowing into a perfectly formed and smooth top. Generously scaled and monolithic in form, Nim also evokes a dramatic elegance, with a material texture that sits somewhere between natural stone and an otherworldly formation.
After painstaking research PINCH identified Jesmonite as the most suitable construction material for Nim. A man-made, water-based building composite, Jesmonite was ultimately selected because it has excellent casting properties and can replicate very fine details. Jesmonite is also lighter than stone or concrete, and with no VOCs, it is non-invasive to work with, and kinder to the environment.
Nim has been made by the art fabricator Rupert Lampard o, a high-end contemporary art fabrication . A childhood friend of Russell Pinch, who previously manufactured the Twig series seven years ago, Rupert jumped at the chance to bring this experimental and process-driven piece to life.
Rupert’s love of detail and control of his materials matched PINCH’s own ambitions for Nim, and despite this being a piece cast from a mould, Nim is very much a handmade object, requiring the skills of a talented craftsman to hand sculpt the first master before the mould is created. Each of the editions are hand layered and hand painted, taking cues from the unique texture of each piece, resulting in a maelstrom of inky hues running through the sides of the table. Rupert was extremely open to experimentation and that entirely different approach and form of craftsmanship and artistry was crucial to the end result.
Due to the labour intensive handmade production process, Nim will be only available in a limited number of editions; each one numbered and with its own unique painted finish.
The Rochelle School, Arnold Circus, London E2 7ES
Dates: 22 – 27 September 2015
Exhibition Opening Hours:
Tues: 9am – 9pm
Wed – Sat: 10am – 6pm
Sun: 11am – 5pm
A press preview will be held on Tuesday 22 September, 9am – 12pm as part of Shoreditch Design Triangle. Light breakfast provided by Arnold & Henderson of Rochelle Canteen.
Follow PINCH on Instagram and Twitter: @Pinch_London
LDF Hashtag: #RochelleSchool #LDF15