Gallery Fumi’s crystal anniversary celebration is a boundary-pushing design exhibition

In traditional wedding anniversary terms, 15 years calls for crystal, so when Gallery Fumi founders Sam Pratt and Valerio Capo called upon Libby Sellers to take the reins of their celebratory new show, ‘Growth + Form’ (on view until 30 September 2023), she gave them a fitting gift. 

Gallery Fumi's crystal anniversary: Growth and Form

‘It seemed appropriate on the 15th anniversary to offer them crystal,’ says Sellers, a long-term collaborator who had also curated the tenth anniversary exhibition. ‘I started with this basic idea of crystal, but far from any literal interpretation or representation, I decided to celebrate its qualities as a material in flux, its growth and form, from small particles into a structure of geometric beauty.’

The inspiration for the theme comes from Scottish biologist D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson’s 1917 treatise On Growth and Form, a mathematical study of living forms, from fish and shells to mammals’ horns and the symmetry of plants, all detailed in their ‘growing, ballooning, sprouting, metamorphosing into harmonious shapes’. 

Sellers found hints of this while looking at the work of Gallery Fumi designers, from Rowan Mersh’s swirling patterns of organic materials to Lucas Wegwerth’s crystal growth onto sculptures, and Voukenas Petrides’ furniture that looks like sculptural bone structures. ‘Some of the themes that I explored through Thompson’s writing were already there, in their work – I was just adding this sort of contextual cultural framework on top of it.’

15 years of Gallery Fumi

Now based on Mayfair’s Hay Hill, the gallery first debuted in Shoreditch in 2008. ‘We came to it in almost a very naive way,’ says Pratt, who set up the gallery with Capo after the pair had been collecting modern design for a while. They describe the early days of the gallery as improvisational. ‘With our day-to-day jobs [in marketing and finance], we thought, there must be more to life than this. What else can we do? All we knew was that we liked beautiful things.’

From the start, they decided their gallery’s scope would be different from their own collecting. ‘We thought we shouldn’t necessarily look at the past, but explore the future, where we could add value,’ says Pratt. The first designer they contacted was new graduate Max Lamb, whose polystyrene ‘Poly’ furniture attracted their attention at his live-work studio. Lamb was part of the gallery’s first show in 2008. Called ‘Materialism’, it coincided with the London Design Festival and featured works by designers who have since become Fumi regulars, such as Sarah van Gameren and Tim Simpson of Glithero, and other then-emerging names such as Philippe Malouin and Paul Cocksedge. It was an exhibition that set the tone for the gallery’s future, establishing a foundation that Pratt and Capo would build on for the next 15 years, while keeping the same energetic attitude towards design. They still talk about that time with a spark in their eyes – describing the mix of fear and excitement that came with launching an emerging, contemporary design gallery in the middle of a global financial crash (the day of the inauguration, Capo recalls, ‘the Evening Standard’s main headline read “Recession is here”’).

From there, the gallery’s success came from a mix of the founders’ great intuition and lucky encounters, such as the one with Milanese design doyenne Rossana Orlandi, who invited them to take over a space at the Sardinian development of Promenade du Port. ‘We had nothing to lose so we flew to Porto Cervo, and it was really pivotal for us,’ says Capo. For the following nine years, he and Pratt would decamp to Sardinia every summer, working 16-hour shifts to establish a network of clients who still follow them to this day.

‘We have been hyper-motivated to make this work,’ continues Capo. ‘With time, we got to meet amazing people, working with designers and artists. We’re very blessed.’ Working with emerging designers in a collectible panorama mostly dominated by masters has come with its own challenges. ‘We had to start teaching [clients] and showing them the new and the future,’ explains Capo. ‘And we are still convincing them. But once they understand it, then it flows.’

Over the years, their work has enriched London’s design panorama, and the power of Fumi lies in the relationships established by Capo and Pratt with everyone they work with. In conversation, they often use the word ‘family’ to describe their collaborators, and they stress that every gallery commission is the result of an in-depth exchange with the designers, starting at the embryonic stage of a project and developing in tandem with their creatives. ‘When they show us something, we know immediately: if it sparks the emotion in us, then we can develop something together,’ says Pratt, describing the process as ‘organic’.

What was mere passion for creation has blossomed into a design expertise that allows them to guide designers through experimentation, new material explorations and object typologies. ‘We always try to push the designers, and sometimes we push them somewhere they had not envisaged,’ adds Capo. ‘We are attracted by the whimsical and the provocative, but the pieces are refined, well made and there’s always a story behind them. We love rediscovering old techniques, and the use of unusual materials. And now, we’re also open to the implementation of new technologies combined with craft.’

The new works created for the exhibition are shown through a set designed by Leendert De Vos, and convey the gallery’s eclectic contemporary approach: there is a hand-blown glass chandelier by Stine Bidstrup (made of what Capo jokingly refers to as ‘glass fettuccine’), a wall sculpture by Rowan Mersh, made of thousands of hand-painted sticks assembled into a magnetic composition, isometric seating by Study O Portable inspired by Sol LeWitt’s Incomplete Open Cube, and two new pieces of furniture by Max Lamb made from a single log of timber.

As well as a creative opportunity to closely experiment with the designers in a new conceptual context, the anniversary also offers Capo and Pratt an opportunity for reflection. After 15 years of growth and expansion, from their Shoreditch home to a Mayfair gallery, from a DIY concept to being part of the world’s most important fairs, the goal for the future takes a more gradual pace, in line with the exhibition’s themes. ‘One of our challenges will be to stay relevant, and keep finding talent that interests us,’ says Pratt. Adds Capo, ‘I would like it if we could grow slowly and organically, together with our artists.’ As for us, we can’t wait to see where the next 15 years will take them.

‘Growth + Form’ is on show until 30 September at Gallery Fumi, 2-3 Hay Hill, London

galleryfumi.com

A version of this article appears in the October 2023 issue of Wallpaper*, available in print from 7 September, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today