We’ve shared an inordinate amount of bird art here so it always strikes us when we come across yet another aesthetically appealing depiction of our fowl friends. The intricate organza feathered Embroidered Birds by Galante and Lacman blew our minds with the intensive and laborious crafting required to bring them to life.
Organza Feathered Bird Sculptures
Maurizio Galante and Tal Lancman brought together their research as couturier, designer, and collectors to create a series of unique bird artworks made by transforming old antiques into new, tactile, one-of-a-kind sculptures.
The Embroidered Bird series was inspired by a visit to the German porcelain manufacturer Nymphenburg and the discovery of a porcelain sculpture of a barn owl. A discovery that, in their own words, left them somewhat perplexed: the object was beautiful, but the material felt too massive, failing to convey the lightness of the bird’s plumage. Something remained to be done.
The duo sought out old decorative porcelain bird sculptures from Germany, Italy and Denmark, whose size corresponded to the bird’s actual size. Then they covered each with multiple layers of thousands of tiny handmade fabric pieces representing feathers.
Each “feather” is composed of 6 pieces of silk organza, between which tiny glass beads are sewn, separating the fabric elements to produce a voluminous effect.
The piece is then assembled onto a base of an overturned dish, a tongue-in-cheek way to make the series cohesive.
Hand-crafted in their atelier, the series of Embroidered Bird Sculptures is divided in two parts; diurnal (parrots, macaws, cockatoo) and nocturnal species (owls).
Fixed in time, each is in a posture emblematic of its species, only transfigured with hundreds of hours of painstakingly layered artificial plumage.
And one crow:
The embroidered birds sculptures have been exhibited at:
The Museum of Art & Industry Saint-Etienne, France
Triennale Design museum, Milan, Italy.
MUDAM Museum of Modern Art, Luxembourg
Galerie des Gobelins / Mobilier National, Paris, France
One of them, a white snowy owl, was chosen for the Elysée Palace collection.
Unlike the naïve and rather morbid process of taxidermy seeking to resurrect a dead animal, here the false is assumed, proclaimed: a porcelain animal, fabric feathers, and a base evoking inverted dishes used as a distancing instrument, all defy the laws of nature.- Galante &Lacman
Galante & Lancman
all images courtesy of Galante & Lancman