Our Latest Collaboration
Ponder and Reason:
Art and its place at the dining table.
Twist. Tondo. Mycelium.
Brett Graham | The Ledbury
Then.
A long time ago. Precisely how long I cannot say. I encountered the Fragmented table at Aynhoe. Even in that amazing house amongst so many fabulous pieces the table captivated with its ascetic power and purpose. A beautiful and silent statement in the library of an otherworldly house.
Many years later I met Ian in the same room at Aynhoe. This encounter pulled me further into the captivating universe of Based Upon work.
I was immediately in thrall to the work. Astonished by the absolute imagination, the infinite questions and the complex and entangled connections to nature and existence that defined every piece.
I never dreamed I would work with Based Upon.
The events of 2020 and the collapse and remake of familiar society offered up the opportunity to re imagine the Ledbury Dining Room.
Not to simply move furniture and apply a fresh coat of paint. To absolutely re-evaluate and consider the place and its very reason.
Now.
A table from the Twist series is the centre, the fundamental object, in the Dining
Room. The golden fractures and the dramatic shadows. The connection it forms between the room and the people who eat there. The instinct it possesses to transfigure the act of dining to that of high ritual.
It is a piece which is beyond art which is appreciated by simply looking at. This piece, night after night, is used, lived upon and anointed.
This evening it was covered in exquisite wine and goat milk butter. Tomorrow it will be something else.
The energy, the patina and evidence of life and use that it takes on only make the table more beautiful and more precious.
It is already difficult to remember the room before the table. It is impossible to envisage a time in the future when the room will not have the table.
For me, the work of Based Upon has a magical duality. Some people will see, and feel, that the pieces are just objects of beauty that harmonise with a favourite restaurant room.
For me, Tondo, Mycelium and the Twist table all symbolise a significant point of rebirth and of reason and direction.
Of course, the allure and enchantment of their work is addictive. I hope to have further forays into the realm of Based Upon.
ian abell | based upon
Brett and I had met a few times at Aynhoe Park. I’d attended the first supper club James Perkins held there. Brett had cooked. I remarked that the starter reminded me of the way that my Mam’s Mam, Grandma Morgan added vinegar to her mushy peas. My brother thought this was inappropriate. I was offering a great complement. Grandma Morgans steak pie with chips and mushy peas remains my death row last meal. We talked again looking out to his white deer that faded into the mist at the edge of Aynhoe’s Capability Brown landscape. And there was a sense that we got each other…the output of our creative processes couldn’t be more different…his lives for a moment and is sometimes gone in a single swallow while we make work to last ‘forever’ or for long enough that those who come to own it, many years forward, will only know only the myths of its creation. But our process is common, almost exact. We go as far and as deep as we can in the search of creative perfection because if we can imagine better than what is in front of us, then what we have is not enough. The creative process is complete when we have gone too far and begin over-fingering, layering what was already there in a smattering of clumsy pomp. We have learned when to stop. There is an engraving over the entrance of the Victoria and Albert Museum which reads, “The excellence of every art must consist in the complete accomplishment of its purpose”. Brett and Based Upon unite in their understanding of the difference between flair and frill. Workmanship is not whimsy. Care is not glut. Experimentation is alchemy that must serve and delight. It teases and it nourishes because the life-force that was brought to it remains within and is transferred to those who consume.
