×

Subscribe to our newsletter

Highlights From the Previous Week, Partnered Events and Haikus. View our Newsletter archive

Faye & Erica Toogood: Digging Deep

Jan 24, 2023

For the A/W 2022 issue, TLmag38: Origine/Origin, Philip Fimmano wrote about Assemblage 7: Lost and Found, a new collection of sculptural furniture by Faye Toogood, and a collection of hand painted clothing in collaboration with her sister Erica, presented last fall at Friedman Benda in Los Angeles.

Scroll right to read more ›
Text by Philip Fimmano

“I felt like I was revealing something that had always been there. Something almost prehistoric that had been lost to time, and it was my job to find it again.” – Faye Toogood

The fragments that are lost and found at archaeological sites provide the foundation for Faye Toogood’s latest collection of sculptural objects; forms and materials that have first been lost from view, and then reclaimed, like forgotten artefacts dredged up from a peat bog. The designer’s idiosyncratic aesthetic is again excavated in this impressive body of new work, referred to as Assemblage 7, and which is made up of tables, a desk and seating, realised in oak and marble through subtractive carving techniques. The oak is stained with shellac; post-fossil in its physicality but finished like eighteenth-century English furniture.

Sculpting maquettes from blocks from wax and clay is the starting point for Toogood. The names of the resulting pieces – Plot, Barrow, Cairn, Mound – evoke the remnants of medieval Britain, when standing stones shaped by man and time stood exposed as powerful totems. The landscape is brought to the fore by chiselling out ripples on the objects’ surface or polishing the Purbeck marble Toogood has used, bringing to light the ancient shells embedded within its limestone base. That Purbeck marble was traditionally used in ecclesiastical buildings adds a spiritual layer to this material for Toogood.

The garments that Erica Toogood cuts are just as sturdy as Faye’s furniture. She too is a sculptor, and the flat pattern is her slab. Made in a limited edition in collaboration with her sister, the workwear shapes have been hand-painted in red tin brown, blue and green – the colours of the rural British landscape where they grew up, but also of the Arts and Crafts movement – adding a swirl of botanical beauty to the pair’s archaeological expedition. These cotton canvas smocks take on utilitarian patch pockets and variations in length: a buttoned shirt, a jacket and work coat, atop a pair of pants. Expressive brushstroke hues that are layered like geological stratigraphy; alluvial, murky, sedimentary, and breaking ground in every sense.

Assemblage 7: Lost and Found was on view at Friedman Benda, Los Angeles from October 7-November 11, 2022.

https://t-o-o-g-o-o-d.com

@t_o_o_g_o_o_d

www.friedmanbenda.com

@friedman_benda

All photos courtesy of Faye Toogood & Friedman Benda

Cairn, Assemblage 7 Collection, oak. Photo Agnus Mill
Mound I, Assemblage 7 Collection, Photo by Angus Mill
Plot II, Assemblage 7 Collection, oak, détail /detail. Photo Agnus Mill
Detail of Hollow II, Assemblage 7 Collection, Photo by Angus Mill
Barrow, Assemblage 7 Collection, marble. Photo Agnus Mill
Hand Painted Garment, Photo by Genevieve Lutkin
Hand Painted Garments, Photo by Genevieve Lutkin
Back

Articles you also might like

Through innovative techniques with wood and metal, Pia Maria Raeder is crafting a distinctive body of work in the collectible design world. Her almost anthropomorphic collections capture a sense of nature’s mystery, its hidden creatures or glimmering stardust, while exuding luxury and the beauty of the handmade.