Interior design studio Roman and Williams has installed cabinets inside its New York showroom that are filled with tchotchkes coloured to match a new paint palette by Farrow & Ball.
The installation at boutique furniture store RW Guild comprises three wooden cabinets with Dutch glass fronts that are filled with decorations that have been painted in a range of colours.
Displays include bronze sculptures of birds and 18th-century botanical models, which have been dipped in paints from the collection Colour by Nature.
Roman and Williams created the showcase to celebrate the launch of the new collection by Farrow & Ball. Created in collaboration with London's Natural History Museum, the palette draws on shades first noted in German geologist Abraham Gottlob Werner's Nomenclature of Colours book from 1814.
Charles Darwin used the classification book on his travels, including his four-year voyage around South America, New Zealand and Australia on the HMS Beagle. The book helped him reference hues before the advent of colour photography.
Four pale tones are in the Colour by Nature collection, including Snow White, Orange coloured White, Skimmed milk White and Ash Grey. Animals, minerals and vegetation are credited to colours, with examples such as Carara marble, opal, the neck of a mallard, the crest of a golden crested wren, flint and dead leaves of grass cited.
"We felt we wanted to enable people to have the real colours of nature in their home," CEO Anthony Davey told Dezeen at the launch earlier this month.
Drawing on this natural element, the ornaments inside the cabinets are sculptural animals and plants that are then coloured in the tones of the collection. The installation is located Roman and Williams' flagship store on 53 Howard St in Soho, which includes its furniture and homeware showroom, and La Mercerie Café.
Roman and Williams's founders Robin Standefer and Stephen Alesch and Charlotte Cosby, Farrow & Ball's head of creative, together visited the London museum to reference an early version of Werner's book held in the archive.
Farrow & Ball's Dorset facility used sophisticated technology to record the different colour spectrometers, and then digitised and made small batches to test. The company also named the paints the original names found in the book.
"We're known for having quite quirky paint names which are a reflection of either the history of where we come from," said Davey. "We will have references to things that are just a bit weird and interesting, like cooking up a green which conjures up bright, zingy and tangible."
Roman and Williams, which was founded in 2002, is also working on the redesign of the British galleries at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art that will open early next year, and using Farrow & Ball paints.
The New York design studio's other projects in the city include a tower along the Highline called The Fitzroy, the Ace Hotel and the Standard. It is also currently designing a home for actress Gwyneth Paltrow.
Photography is by Adrian Gaut.