Creative director Matt Lorrain is making a name for the made-in-Italy furniture brand with elegant and functional pieces; he shares more about the brand with us
Furniture brand SP01 prides itself on being conceived in Australia, designed by renowned creatives around the world, and produced by leading Italian manufacturers. The four-year-old label, which is Space Furniture’s first in-house brand, has put out six collections to date, working with three different designers to produce hand-finished furniture with classic influences and crafted to the highest standards.
SP01 worked with Milan-based Metrica on its first collection of furniture in sculpted and hand-finished solid ash, paired with an extensive range of upholstery textiles. An outdoor collection with Australian designer and Louis Vuitton collaborator Tom Fereday followed, and the brand’s most recent tie-up is with London-based industrial designer Tim Rundle, which has resulted in understated gems such as the Caristo and Michelle chairs.
Through it all, the integrity of design and authenticity have helped SP01 stand out in a cluttered marketplace. We speak with SP01 co-founder and creative director Matt Lorrain to learn what makes the brand tick.
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What are SP01’s principles?
Matt Lorrain (ML) Firstly, to make sure that the design is interesting. A lot of our pieces have a very subtle reference to another design era. We try to touch on these very lightly because we don’t want our pieces to feel retro. We want our furniture to feel contemporary and new, but your eye also recognises details that could reference another era.
We also try to get our products to market at a reasonable price point even though we’re working with high-quality materials and quite high environmental standards, which have associated costs. We choose to produce in Italy because we want the quality of “made in Italy” and also because it is easy to export worldwide from there.
How do you decide which designers to work with?
ML The process is relatively organic. Usually, I’ll find the designer, although Metrica was recommended to us. When we were building the brand, we spoke to Moooi about being our producer. Moooi at the time was already working with Metrica. They said, “Why don’t you work with the same people we’re working with?” Because it’s a small world in design and furniture, we had some mutual connections with Tim Rundle. I met him by chance in Milan, and we decided to do a collaboration.
Each studio responds to the brief quite differently, and we find them in different ways. And I think we’ll always be a bit flexible. One of the reasons behind the brand was that we wanted to create products that are more responsive, that aren’t stuck in defined silos such as the Italian style, the Scandinavian style, the Japanese style. We wanted to do something which had a mix of these different cultural influences.