Ralph Pucci brings his sleek luxury furnishings to London

The monochrome pop-up that New York-based gallerist Ralph Pucci has installed in Mayfair spells out one possible future for American design, in bold type, black and white.

“I wanted to create a space that was clean, pure and sculptural,” he says, before elaborating on what inspired him to cross the Atlantic.

The Pucci family business pivoted during the pandemic, killing off the bespoke mannequin production that it was known for, which had occupied the entire 11th floor of its prime real estate in Chelsea, New York, and shifted into niche, ultra-high end furniture production. The company now has a changing roster of makers-in-residence, a growing selection of radical new designs made on site and a show in London that could, Pucci says, “end up being a permanent fixture of our business”.

The move isn’t all that surprising. When I visit Pucci at his headquarters in Manhattan, the screen in the lift on the way up tells me it’s 100F (38C) outside. Walking into the vast penthouse showroom, with wall-sized black-and-white portraits of Andy Warhol on the wall by photographer Chris Makos, is to step into a glacially air-conditioned loft abode that’s the stuff of real estate dreams.

It’s a place that has regularly held cocktail parties for shows devoted to the furniture of Hervé Van der Straeten, Andreé Putman and other interior design luminaries. It is a bubble of serene, sleek luxury. Pucci has been representing designers of a certain calibre since Putman steered him into the field at the end of the 1980s, and today his New York space is populated by work by India Mahdavi, Richard Meier and Pierre Paulin.

“The changes we are going through now started 10 years ago,” says Pucci. “We did our first chair with Vladimir Kagan, and that was the start of us sculpting in-house. We were busy with the mannequin business for so long but experimented with furniture little by little. Then fashion retail as we knew it died, and we had these designers who really wanted to work in the sculpture studio.”

Recent artists to work in the New York studio have included Eric Schmitt and Elizabeth Garouste, he says. “It all got going when Patrick Naggar, who works between Paris and New York, got stuck here during the pandemic, and we made a whole collection with him, from start to finish.”

It means the gallery’s clients can visit and see the work they have commissioned in progress. “They can look at the actual tools being used, rather than order something that takes months to arrive from somewhere they never see,” he says. There’s also the added bonus of being able to give the current supply chain crisis a wide swerve. Pucci’s product is made in and shipped from one place, although bronze elements are fabricated in Europe.

Naggar’s work is among the Pucci-represented pieces on show in London, including a new Seagull chair (with a winged structure befitting its name) and the Aphrodite floor lamp, unfinished versions of which were in the New York studio when I visited, standing like elongated, bleached pieces of bone.

“I was able to work with furniture design in the way a sculptor would,” says Naggar. “It was very hands-on — making a plaster model first, adding layer over layer and seeing the form develop gradually, in some cases introducing an aspect of something irregular, with finger marks.”

Another maker who has work on show at Pucci in London is Stefan Bishop, who works with roots and bark, and frequently torches his materials to blacken them for heightened drama and to accentuate texture.

“I discovered the Pucci gallery and showroom in my twenties, straight out of art school,” says Bishop. “Everything they showed seemed eloquent and legitimately distinct, and the family forge relationships with people for decades.

“There are some pieces in London from a series I did entitled The Ring, made from offcuts of wood that I started stacking in different ways,” he says, adding that the work was born of necessity, during a period of personal financial difficulties. “But they are now the most sought-after works I’ve made. There’s something inspirational about doing the best you can with what you have.”

Pucci’s son Michael, the youngest member of the family in the business at 32, believes that a modest approach to presentation and production might be a way forward for a business that, until now, has been all about extravagance. It was his idea to create the London pop-up.

“It’s the absolute opposite of the set-up here in New York,” says the younger Pucci. “We have showrooms in Miami and Los Angeles, but London is about demonstrating we don’t need to have a huge space and can offer something more intimate to the right clients.”

Why London? Why not Milan, which has found favour with numerous American brands looking for a European satellite base? “I see Milan as being more about manufacturing than collectible, unique design,” says Ralph. The older Pucci is keeping his options open but would quite like to have a permanent space in London. “New York isn’t the centre of anything anymore,” he says. “The energy is different and young creative people can’t afford to come here anymore.”

An enervated local currency makes London particularly attractive for anyone wanting to sell product to a cosmopolitan customer right now, as does having a presence during Frieze and PAD, when all eyes in the design and art world are on the city.

Alongside the work of the previously mentioned makers, there are Modernist lighting designs reminiscent of Barbara Hepworth by Ralph Pucci himself, as well as pieces by London-based architect and artist Spencer Fung, and the aerodynamic Gabriella, the last chair that Vladimir Kagan designed before his death in 2016.

Walking around the penthouse gallery in New York, Pucci runs his finger along the back of it. “He was the first person to work in our sculpture studio here, and this chair was also sculpted in that space, then we had it made in bronze in our factory in France. He died just before we showed it in our gallery in Miami and I’ve held on to this piece because it was the first one we created, and it means so much to me. But it’s going to London because I want to show how invested I am in taking what we do to the city.”

In London until October 31, ralphpucci.com

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