Tbilisi-based, all-female studio Rooms is presenting patinated metal tables and sculptural black timber chairs at The Future Perfect gallery and furniture store in New York.
Rooms founders Keti Toloraia and Nata Janberidze designed the two collections – named Alchemy and Wild Sculptural – for an exhibition at The Future Perfect, coinciding with the NYCxDesign festival.
The show of work by the Georgian designers, who run their studio with two other women, joins other all-female exhibitions taking place concurrently in New York during May 2017.
To complement its products, Rooms has furnished The Future Perfect showroom like a "mystical universe" with custom-made dark wall coverings that resemble a night sky, and decorative Georgian artefacts.
The trio of tables in the Alchemy – Turning into Gold collection are based on the supposed medieval chemical process of transforming base metals into gold.
Each table is marked with a grid and is available in a different grade of patina – the film that naturally develops on the surface of metal when exposed to atmospheric elements over a long period of time.
This process can be accelerated and purposefully applied using chemicals, which Rooms used to darken the tables in the series from golden brass to a darker rust, and then black.
Also on show are pieces that reference the traditional furniture and shapes of Soviet architecture from the studio's home country.
Georgia is located in the Caucasus between Europe and Asia, and was part of the Soviet Union until 1991. Many of its building and monuments were constructed in the brutalist style that is commonly associated with the former Eastern Bloc.
The heavy-looking forms of these structures are replicated in Rooms' Wild Sculptural chairs, which are hand-crafted from black timber. One of the chairs is painted gold to match the Alchemy collection.
The studio also added gold touches to the edges of its Triple Bench, a chunky darkened-wood bench made up of three curved seats, while the Triple Coffee Seat features a golden top.
Georgia's history and traditions also informed Rooms' 2016 Wild Minimalism Collection, which includes a black timber armchair and a tall chair made of narrow pieces of wood.
The exhibition is on show at The Future Perfect, 55 Great Jones Street, New York, until July 2017. NYCxDesign runs up to 24 May 2017.