BIG-GAME

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Awarded

BIG-GAME: Grégoire Jeanmonod / Augustin Scott de Martinville

The collection 'Heritage in Progress'

Product and Industrial Design

Jury report

Trophies, dismembered and recycled with irony
Who does not know them, the hunting trophies on the wall? But – to be honest – who would still want to hang them on the wall? The designer duo Grégoire Jeanmonod and Augustin Scott de Martinville, trained at the ECAL in Lausanne, radically reinterprets this trophy and makes it acceptable to hunters of good design. That is to say the head of an elk, a stag or a deer presents itself, dismemberted, in a flat box. It is made of plywood, is put together by the customer and is only then put on the wall. And there we have it, a designer trophy. The two designers are real translators between us and the things we have long considered abandoned or obsolete: silhouettes as wall fittings? Yes, they are metal coat hooks in the shape of silhouettes. How do wooden table underframes fit together with squiggled countersunk shapes? A cheeky stylistic recycling of the French Regency, a cunning style import from the 18th century, brazenly post-modern and playing entirely against elitist and sober Swiss taste. The piece is made by a famous French producer of refined design. A 'to act-as-if' attitude characterises all the works of the designer duo: a lamp made of a metal tube and of fabric imitates a construction-site lamp. Design is here used ironically as 'appropriation', the appropriation of middle-class forms for the sake of unbridled joy in quoting but without betraying functionality. Rarely someone managed to do this so playfully, professionally, refreshingly and humorously as these two designers. And: It does not remain a spleen, a precious unique object worthy of a museum. The zeitgeist agrees with this designer duo: all products are proving their worth on the market and are produced in series by famous producers such as 'Ligne Roset' or 'Vlaemsch'.
Peter Stohler