THE LOEWE DOWN

As Loewe’s creative director since 2013, Northern Irish-born designer Jonathan Anderson has propelled the Spanish luxury fashion brand forwards while often looking back to its roots – it was founded in 1846 as a cooperative of leather artisans. After creating a range of ceramicinspired leather bowls in 2015, he has now expanded Loewe’s home offering by employing a leather inlay technique to embellish early 20th-century oak furniture. Like marquetry for leather, the ‘intarsio’ method is Anderson’s cutting-edge slant on the jigsaw-puzzle knitting technique of the same name. Leather is precisely sliced into shapes using laser-cutting technology, then master artisans slot the pieces together to form the design before it is ironed to create a seamless finish. The idea was inspired by Bloomsbury Group artist Roger Fry’s colourful painted cupboard doors, chairs and tables, and many of the graphics used are derived from Loewe’s archive of silk prints. There are six pieces in the collection ( pictured above and right) and they’re all made to order. Furniture from £6,725 for a lamp; notebooks, £250 each ( loewe.com).