been a designer at Calvin Klein and creative
director for Georg Jensen and Swatch, while
Weisz is a master tailor who had his own
atelier and eponymous label for 25 years,
and has also worked as a fashion director for
magazines and brands such as Swarovski.
They both ‘collect, hoard and hunt’ objects,
which often become the starting points for
a new collection.
‘Nadja and I engage in our designs in a
very playful way,’ says Weisz. ‘When we work,
it’s almost like entering a fantasy realm.’
Humour is a constant, as is a conversational
game of ping-pong that ends up pushing
each project further. In their four years of
collaboration, this eclectic approach has led
to five collections that highlight different
craft skills and embody different narratives.
These include Nos Trucs en Plumes, inspired
by French ballet dancer Zizi Jeanmaire, and
Ways to Disappear, a range of objects that
seem to vanish when combined with trays
finished in the same colours.
The latest collection, launched this spring,
is called Perfect Stills. A series of tableware
made out of glass, ceramic, metal, wood andstone by craftspeople in Austria, the Czech
Republic, Romania and Italy, it draws its
inspiration from archetypal elements; the
pair refer to the pieces as meditative totems.
Functional yet enigmatic, they appear almost
to dance or float thanks to curved bases. As
with many of the duo’s works, the individual
elements can be fitted together to compose
a single object or separated out into different
pieces to create a ‘product landscape’.
‘Each piece is a generic or archaic shape,
but once you put them together, it becomes
a Zerunianandweisz piece,’ says Zerunian. »Peter Weisz and Nadja Zerunian tap some of Europe’s marginalised
artisans to give traditional craft a contemporary edge
PHOTOGRAPHY: LISA EDI WRITER: GIOVANNA DUNMALLRare skills
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