Lutson: The Next Generation.

Since the mid 80’s Lut and I have been the embodiment of Lutson during that time we had the privilege to work for designers throughout the world or for heritage in prestigious locations, to many to mention. Today I wish to thank you all who had faith in our work and gratified us with orders, without you I would not be writing these words. Most of all I would like to thank our distributors with some of whom we had long relationships build on mutual appreciation and understanding, Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Transmission doesn’t mean that we will retire and do something completely different. We stay as attentive “second violins” to help steer Lutson further into the 21e century. In the article bellow (yes it’s French) you will meet, probably for the first time, our daughter Gudrun & Fantin Valence, their mission is to keep the Lutson leathers at the high quality level they are known for. Besides this they will introduce some novelty and freshness which only youth & talent can bring.

” As good as old better than new” and “Gilt leather for the 21e century” have been Lutson’s devises for decades and they will remain so for many more.

Time to enjoy the article published in the 2024 issue of “Terre de Landes”

As Always

Fred

New gilt-leather seats for two Portuguese baroque chairs

Anyone can see the chairs are in perfect condition and that leathers seats are all but gone. This type of gilt leather was originally part of a wall covering. Circa 1735 it is installed and is the proud of the house, then fashion changes and the room is redecorated, the once precious leathers are stored in the attic, where a leak in the roof …… etc etc (fiction) than somewhere around 1810 they are recovered by an amazed granddaughter some leathers are reinstalled in a hallway some turn into a screen and some find their final destiny on chairs. This is what you are looking at now, the story is fiction but the senario is good.

Time to set to work !

The pattern on the chairs is the Marot panel in a polychrome version. The Marot is a classic design we have in collection, the panel as shown here above is gilded in a light silver-gilding the birds had a coat of shellac and the panel is antiqued so to down-tone the shine.

The expert hand of Lut …

The base colour for the grapes and flowers are added … the expert hand of Lut !

As by magic all the polychrome paint is added, indeed … still the expert hand of Lut !

Now its time to add antiquing to bind all colours and to down-tone the shine even more.

Side by side you can appreciate the difference between a panel which is antiqued and one which is not. Time to go and see the uphosterer.

OMG they have been difficult to make decent pictures of !

Isabelle Arcay: the uphoslterer. isabelle.arcay@sfr.fr

As Always

Fred

Crane Estate a set of gilt-leather panels. Verentuil and Palmette polychrome

Best Wishes and Happy New Year 🙂

Thank you all for reading and following this blog.

I wish you all a happy and healthy year 2022

Our first leathers this year go to Crane Estate near Boston they were ordered by our long time distributors and friends from Belfry Historic Consultants Inc https://www.belfryhistoric.com/

Crane Estate is impressive by its architecture and spectacular landscape and as if this is not enough it Crane has quite an unusual history, go and find out https://www.craneestateevents.com/

Its an honor to supplie the Estate with a set of gilt-leather panels.

“Courtesy of Jay Burnham Photography” https://jayburnham.photodeck.com/

Verentuil and Palmette gilt-leather in a polychrome version in accordance to submitted colour strike off’s

Verentuil Polychrome

Palmette Polychrome

I hope to able to post some pictures of the upholstered item at a later date.

Checkout Spicyfrog64 its … Lutson 2.0 link bellow.

As always

Fred

What we do too :

http://spicyfrog64.com

Kinkarakawa. The Japanese Gilt Leather form the Edo Period

During the Edo period, quite some gilt leather from the Low Countries, sailed to Japan.
Original gilt leather rooms can be seen all over Europe and in some places of the US as well.
Even though the Japanese liked the gilt leather I don’t think there was ever one complete room decorated in it
Instead the Japanese made precious objects and exotic accessories from the Flemish or Dutch leathers.

They made also tobacco pouches

 

Here some boxes made by yours truly

As Always

Fred

Bespoke Mandarin Gilt Leather panel. Cuir de Cordoue personalisé

Bespoke Gilt Leather you said ?

At Lutson you will not find Gilt Leather ready form the shelve.

At all times we have claimed to fight uniformity.

All the gilt leather panels made in our workshop are hand made and hand painted,

which makes each panel unique in its own ways.

 Bespoke or Custom made Gilt Leather is our thing.

Fact is that if you wish bespoke Gilt Leather …..

You will find that there are not many studio’s offering this sort of service. We do …

Here some pictures of a very bespoke Mandarin.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This panel is not a “traditional” polychrome panel.

The inspiration came from the early 18th century Coromandel lack screens.

In the the Lower Countries and in the UK some Chinoiserie screens were made on tooled Gilt Leather.

You will note the uneven gilding,

the semi transparent black background was painted on a reddish ground.

The Mandarin as you will find it in our current catalog is a design that dates from circa 1700

 It was produced by a German workshop form Augsburg.

As Always

Fred

Gilt Leather, Verentuil, Leather wall Panel

This Verentuil is part of a set made for our Swedish Distributor Annika Arvidsen from Lages AB

Special attention was given to the metallic background in order to reproduce a

Mother of Pearl effect

Polychrome paint job following the customers specifications  by Lut

 

Details do matter!

Best Wishes

Fred

Plaisance Panel

Plaisance

69,5 X 79cm (27,36X31,1”)

 The Plaisance is probably a Flemish design from circa 1750.

The picture bellow shows the original as it can  be seen in the Plantin Moretus Museum Antwerp.

No other archive seems to be available, perhaps some panels are stored in the reserves of decorative arts museums, who will tell.

The original design is small scaled and busy with perhaps more than 70 flowers per panel.

We decided to rescale the design and reduced the amount of flowers to 28.

This way we could contain the work and thus the price per panel it also makes the design more appealing for contemporary designers.

This panel is one of a set made for a customer in Amman Jordan.

Traditionally the color scheme for this panel would be a gilded ground, greenish leafing and polychrome flowers.

 

This could well be a close match to a 18th century panel.

Some details

 

To end with, here what a set of 4 looks like, well I hope the upholseter will do a better job than I am on my pc. The aim was to make a square of 4 panels, hmmm it didn’t work out as I expected.

 

Best Wishes

Frederic

MetLife NY Boardroom Leathers

Back in 2004 we were asked to reproduce the leather wall coverings for

MetLife NY

The job and the challenge were considerable.

We made samples for over 8 months, meanwhile the people in charge of the project tried to source other suppliers for the gilded leather in order to secure their need.

In the end we got the order for over 400 panels of gilded leather.

The finalization of the samples was done over here in our workshop, along with Alaxandra Allart form ArtCare Resourses whom traveled all the way to France

    For many years I have been trying to get some pictures of the job which I never physically saw.

    For an unknown reason MetLife has not been very diligent with pictures.

Despite several requests we never got one picture.

Recently however Robert M. Kelly from the Wallpaper Scholar wrote an article on his blog about the dismanteling of the MetLife Boardroom at One Madison Ave and the transfer and rebuild of this imposing room to the penthouse floor at the actual MetLife building which sits atop Grand Central Station

Robert Kelly was one of those involved in the installation of the leathers along with Barry Blanchard, for those who wish to read the whole story click the link:  http://wallpaperscholarblog.blogspot.fr/

Perhaps the posting from Robert Kelly and this one might help moving lines and will we finally get some good pictures from our distinguished customer.

Removing the ceiling at One Madison, 2004

This is an original panel which we were to reproduce.

 This picture shows the leathers at One Madison, 2004

unfortunately one can’t judge the poor condition of the leathers from this picture.

In his text Mr kelly describes the contition of the leather extensively

Lutson Leathers installed at the MetLife Building atop Grand Central, 2005

Many thanks to Mr Robert Kelly.

Best Wishes

Frederic

Swedish Baroque Chair

This is the back of a Swedish Baroque chair, ornate with the original leather. The seats are worn and lost, the remaining leathers have been removed from the chair and are now stored safely.

color samples have been made at first.

Along with Annika our Swedish distributor http://www.lagestapetserarverkstad.se we discussed the matter of how unusual the Putti looks

Indeed you will notice that he looks like a grown man, which is quite unusual.

The fact is that the we find him not looking like a Putti at all, but a naughty Eros thats what he is !!

The real identity of our Swedish Eros was revealed by Sophie & Jean Marc form www.academiededessin.net

He is no less than Gérard Depardieu 😉

                   

Unfortunately we don’t have a panel with putti’s in our collection.

so we produced 3 Aboncance panels.

The Abondance is from the same style and period. Here painted in a similar coloursceme.

I think the  chairs will look very nice.

As soon as Annika and Leif have the chairs finiched I’ll post some pictures.

As Always

Frederic

Bespoke Verentuil

This Verentuil has an Antiqued Gilded ground.

 As background paint a burgundy colour was required.

Instead, Lut decided to use two shades of burgundy in order to accentuate  the central medallion.

Bleu and Pink were also on the list of the designer.

Usualy some of the leaves are painted in shades of greenish earth colour

Here the greens have gone and been replaced by a bluish colour

Finally the pink went on the Plumes forming the central theme.

This Sample goes to our London showroom at Tatiana Tafur Ltd.

It will also help Tatiana or Andy by showing the customer a possible interpretation of his requests.

And it will be easier to make adaptations based on this existing panel than from some  loose colour swatches.

I guess we soon will be updated on the customers comments.

… ?

Best Wishes

Frederic