Max Lamb - The Vermiculated Ashlar

Photo by Philip Sinden

Last year, for the first time, the London Design Festival worked with HSBC Private Bank both as sponsor and collaborator. The partnership included a design commission: a one-off piece of design for the bank's St James's office which was unveiled at the V&A during the Festival.

British designer Max Lamb won the competion to carry out the commission. Inspired by the castings gallery at the V&A, he created a cast replica of part of the Bank's central office at 78, St James' Street, Lamb then hand-carved the piece using a hammer and chisel into a the shape of a bench.

The piece is called the Vermiculated Ashlar.

Pentagram were commissioned to produce a piece of literature documenting the project in words and images.  

 

The end result is a book of 150x200mm, portrait with a 4pp cover and a 52pp text. The cover is debossed with the original patterning from the casting taken from the building and used to create the piece. Although it's very obvious on the cover, it's quite hard to photograph but the pic below hopefully gives the idea:

The cover material used is Neptune Unique SoftWhite 250gsm and the text alternates in sections between Neptune Unique SoftWhite 155gsm and Colorset Light Grey 120gsm, two quite different papers which work in juxtaposition given the rough and smooth nature of the architectural piece itself.

To read more: http://www.hsbcprivatebank.com/video/maxlamb/maxlamb.html

The project was printed by Gavin Martin (with Gary Bird officiating!) and as you can see here, they've made a beautiful job of it. 

Partner in charge of the project at Pentagram was Domenic Lippa and the designer was Jeremy Kunze. Thanks to Jez for sending me a file copy and a nice note.

http://maxlamb.org/
http://www.pentagram.com/
http://www.gavinmartin.co.uk/

Posted by Justin Hobson 25.02.2011