For the CHIAROSCURO edition, Esther and Dimitrios Tsatsas were inspired by the eponymous device used in painting. Ever since the Late Renaissance, the visual arts have relied on strongly contrasting light and dark in order to give bodies and forms clearer shape and emphasize their spatial character.
In the context of the limited CHIAROSCURO edition, black and ivory have been chosen as the colours to present in a composition of constrasting natural leathers – adding a new nuance to four models in the TSATSAS collection.
The colourful look of the clutch bag TAPE XS with its skillfully knotted leather creates an exciting visual disruption to its otherwise elegant clarity. And the two colours infuse the strict geometry of the minimalist clutch HAZE with a new touch of extravagance. The purist shape of the sculptural OLIVE shoulder bag is dazzlingly emphasized by the interchange of black and ivory, while in the CHIAROSCURO edition the square volume of the small hand and shoulder bag MALVA 2 has a new poignancy thanks to the asymmetrical juxtaposition of the two leather colours.
Tag: crafted
931
A collaboration
with one of today’s most important product designers:
In December 2018, TSATSAS presented the model 931, a bag designed by Dieter
Rams.
Dieter Rams, born in 1932 in Wiesbaden/Germany, is
considered one of the most influential industrial designers of the past
decades. His products for
the companies Braun and Vitsoe inspire creatives around the globe to this day.
The “Ten principles for good design,” which he formulated from the mid-1970s
onwards, pointed even then to the challenges design in particular and our
society as a whole are facing today more than ever.
Having worked in the field of product design for
more than 40 years, Dieter Rams is still highly topical. With missionary zeal, he
continues to claim to this day that the correct understanding of design can
help create a better world.
In 1963 Dieter Rams designed a handbag made of
leather for his wife Ingeborg, whom he met in 1955 when she was working for
Braun as a photographer. It was while working for Braun himself, where he was chief designer from
1961 until 1995, that Rams engaged more strongly with the material leather,
collaborating with leather crafting workshops in Offenbach/Main for the
company’s shaver cases. And it was there that he had the idea of surprising his
wife with a leather bag, yet it remained a one-off.
55 years later, TSATSAS introduced this very bag to
the market. The label’s
design philosophy – to create timeless bags and accessories with a clear design
language that give rise to lasting shapes without any aesthetic expiry date –
was easy to reconcile with Rams’ expectations of a product.
So reduced and simultaneously concise that it
unavoidably calls to mind Rams products, 931 is as up-to-date today as it was
in 1963 and effortlessly bridges five decades of design history.
AROSE
“If I had a flower for every time I thought of you,
I could walk through my garden forever.”
Alfred Lord Tennyson, 1809-1892
Since time immemorial the beauty of the flower has always been a symbol of admiration and affection – it is said that as long ago as the 15th century people had gifts of flowers delivered to their beloved. In 1908 the first flower gifting service was established in Berlin and on the 1920s streets of New York numerous messengers could be seen delivering flowers that were gifted to women from their male admirers – however, it was not normally a bouquet that was handed over to the recipient but rather a single lavishly-wrapped rose.
It was the design studio Deutsche & Japaner that came up with the initial idea of reviving this ritual for the AROSE project. However, the focus was to be just as much on the wrapping and ritual of unpacking a single bloom as on the flower itself.
From discussions with the bag and accessories label TSATSAS, the idea emerged of creating AROSE as a joint project – but both partners felt that nowadays it was no longer appropriate to devote such lavish packaging to a single flower which would, after all, very quickly wilt.
In a move to end the transience of the gift Esther and Dimitrios Tsatsas, the designers behind TSATSAS, brought the material leather into play: by employing a different material for AROSE the flower would be imbued with timeless beauty.
Now petals of supple lamb nappa leather form an opulent rose – inspired by nature’s own creation. Handcrafted in a fine bag maker’s studio in Offenbach/Main every bloom is not only a one-off but also reflects the uniqueness of nature.
The leather blossom comes in a matt black box, which reveals a mirror interior when its slip-on lid is removed. The flower rests on an elevated section bearing a mirror-image quotation by British poet Alfred Lord Tennyson from the 19th century, which describes the poetry of the flower: “If I had a flower for every time I thought of you, I could walk through my garden forever.”
www.deutscheundjapaner.com
EDITION FERDINAND KRAMER® 1963
In 1963, Ferdinand Kramer® surprised his wife Lore with a handbag he had specially designed for her. The Frankfurt architect and designer, renowned for his minimalist and Modernist architecture and product designs, created a timeless bag destined to accompany Lore Kramer both during the day and in the evening.
55 years later, TSATSAS is presenting a re-edition of the KRAMER bag. With its timeless feel, functionality and flexibility it very much seems to be a contemporary design and blends seamlessly with the others in the TSATSAS collection.
“OBJECTS THAT ARE TRULY MODERN
REMAIN SO ENDURINGLY.”
Adolf Loos
An Essay by Katharina Pennoyer
The re-edition of this handbag by Ferdinand Kramer® is a rather special event: Not many people know that back in the early 1960s Kramer, whose reputation to date has previously derived from his functional buildings and utility objects, designed two handbags and an evening dress for his young wife Lore. He simply didn’t like what was available on the market at the time.
Fashion, the world between the twin poles of innovation and endurance, that interplay of colors, shapes and materials, was a field that Kramer, son of the owner of the renowned “Hut-Kramer” store in Frankfurt, explored early on. During the 1920s, this interest was fostered most crucially by Kramer’s relationship with the interior and fashion designer Lilly Reich, later the partner of Mies van der Rohe, and her young, talented student Beate Feith, whom Kramer married in 1930. It was Beate for whom he designed a variety of hats, and he sent her fashion sketches from his trip to Paris in 1925, where he sought out Le Corbusier. During his exile in New York too, and later in Frankfurt, he sketched Beate’s designs for publication in magazines such as LOOK.
No less important for Kramer’s oeuvre were his encounters in Vienna and Frankfurt with Adolf Loos, that ingenious architect and member of the “Lebensreform” movement, who was 28 years his senior and whom he revered. Indeed, it was Adolf Loos who, in the year of Ferdinand Kramer®’s birth, 1898, defined in his article “The Gentlemen’s Hats” thus:
“Objects that are truly modern remain so enduringly.”*
The versatile handbag Ferdinand Kramer designed more than five decades ago is one marvelous example of the principle – and which has now been updated by TSATSAS in three different sizes.
*Adolf Loos, Sämtliche Schriften, ed. Franz Glück, Verlag Herold,
Vienna, 1962, p.83
CONSTANT COMPANIONS
“Every day we come into contact with various things. We do not really pay much attention to most of them. They are simply close at hand, we use them, and set them aside again.
However, a small number of these things come to mean more to us, become more closely bound up with our lives. They accompany us day by day, over a long period of time. They become our constant companions, we grow fonder and fonder of them, and eventually they become a firm part of us.
It makes us happy when, time and time again, we meet people who have, over a period of months and years, found a constant companion in a TSATSAS product.
We have asked a number of these people to show us where and how they share their lives with such a product. The result: Snapshots of our bags and accessories, scenes straight from everyday life, captured on camera.“
Esther and Dimitrios Tsatsas
The following protagonists were part of the ”Constant Companions“ project,
released in December 2017
Byron Amanatidis, Berlin, Germany
Michael Anastassiades, London, United Kingdom
Sarah Böttger, Wiesbaden, Germany
Silke Bücker, Cologne, Germany
Garth Condit, New York, USA
Stefan Dotter, Berlin, Germany
Prof. Markus Frenzl, Frankfurt/Main and Munich, Germany
Andreas Friberg Lundgren, Gothenburg, Sweden
Elise Garcia, Paris, France
Vicente Garcia Jimenez, Udine, Italy
Antonia Henschel, Frankfurt/Main, Germany
Oliver Jahn, Munich, Germany
Elizabeth Jeffer, Chappaqua, USA
Gerhardt Kellermann, Munich, Germany
Isabelle Kountoure, London, United Kingdom
Michael Maharam, New York, USA
Claudia Neumann, Cologne, Germany
Sven Prothmann, Offenbach/Main, Germany
Ana Relvão, Munich, Germany
Remo Röntgen, Dannenberg, Germany
Cristina Salvati, Udine, Italy
Artur Tadevosian, Antwerp, Belgium
Robert Volhard, Frankfurt/Main, Germany
Costas Voyatzis, Athens, Greece
TAPE
Movement is what drives our existence. We are constantly on the move, strolling or scurrying from one place to the next. And our clothes follow us, they swirl around our bodies, crease, flutter in the breeze and reflect the way we move.
Esther and Dimitrios Tsatsas, the team of designers behind TSATSAS, address the subject of movement in the design for their clutch bag TAPE which premiered at the Paris Fashion Week in March 2017.
What is striking about TAPE is the contrast between the actual bag’s severe geometric lines and the soft tapes that flow from it. Imaginatively knotted, these long leather tapes take on a life of their own – they break up the bag’s elegant clarity with their flexibility and their movement, allowing its users to grip it like a classic clutch bag or to hold it by its tapes in a more relaxed fashion.
The Video is a result of a collaboration between musician Chinaski, photographer Gerhardt Kellermann and designer Ana Relvão. The video plays with TAPE’s idiosyncrasies, perfecting the interaction between sound and movement. Relvão and Kellermann, who are based in Munich, artistically contrast the sometimes sinuous and sometimes haphazard movements of the leather tapes in individual slow-motion sequences. And in musician and video artist Chinaski they have found a partner who has succeeded in lending the video a dramatic quality with its own specially composed music.
Musician and video artist Chinaski lives in Frankfurt am Main. He made his name with records and EPs on labels such as Live At Robert Johnson and Common Thread and with repeated live appearances at clubs such as the Robert Johnson and the Berghain. His music reflects his affinity with the warm synthesizer sounds of the 1980s.
Portuguese product designer Ana Relvão has been collaborating with Gerhardt Kellermann, a graduate in Industrial Design and photographer, in Munich since 2012. At their interdisciplinary studio they put together photography and industrial design projects for customers such as Bulthaup, Seymoure and Huawei.
CLOSER
“But if you could just see the beauty,
These things I could never describe.”
Joy Division. “Isolation.” Closer. 1980.
Showing the ephemeral, the transient nature of a moment was the starting point for the project CLOSER, in which Esther and Dimitrios Tsatsas, the designer duo behind TSATSAS, explored the topic of proximity.
Based on photographs of the collection taken in Paris in early 2017 by Dimitrios Tsatsas, CLOSER plays with the elision of distance. Digitally-enlarged images are photographed again, appearing as on the screen with their fragmented structures and their typical digital coloring. By zooming in the image is decomposed into its visual components – a process of decoding at the visual level.
As a result, the actual subject fades into the background. It becomes the canvas of a transient moment, which our eyes would not otherwise perceive. And thus a small detail suddenly becomes omnipresent and the special essence of its beauty is captured. This is no longer about a product or a volume, CLOSER directs our gaze to the seam fashioned by hand, the open pores of the leather, the shine of blood-red nail polish. Things that we seldom perceive, when we take in the object as a whole.
With the project CLOSER Esther and Dimitrios Tsatsas would like to draw our attention to details, something they have been doing for years with their designs. Nothing is left to chance in their bags and accessories: be it the specially designed pulls on zips; the delicate, connecting brass tubes of the core leather straps; or even the single seam along a handle, which the two discuss and examine together.
CLOSER seeks to encourage us to look more closely. And to capture the beauty of a transient moment before it disappears never to return again.
SO_FAR
Known for its handmade bags and accessories of high-quality leather, TSATSAS expanded its repertoire of materials and entering into an extraordinary union with textiles. The project SO_FAR presented five limited versions of the tote bag FLUKE, each in a combination of calfskin and fabrics from the Raf Simons collection of Danish textile company Kvadrat.
SO_FAR represented a new approach in the development of TSATSAS. While the label’s work focused on natural leather and a modern interpretation of traditional crafted leather, translated into contemporary designs, in their work with textiles designer Esther and Dimitrios Tsatsas treaded new paths.
When in 2014 Kvadrat launched its first fabric collection with Raf Simons, the designer duo was thrilled with the patterns, colours and quality. “When we got the chance as the first bag label worldwide to work exclusively with the fabrics of the Kvadrat/Raf Simons collection, our focus was on transferring the contrast between textiles and leather into a new aesthetic,” they explained.
The project SO_FAR was a separate edition intended to complement the existing TSATSAS collection, which was limited in terms of numbers. Starting from January 2017, five versions of the iconic FLUKE bag were available at selected international stores in an edition of 50 each.
www.kvadratrafsimons.com
FLUKE
SO_FAR EDITION 01
FIVE VERSIONS OF THE FLUKE BAG IN
A LIMITED EDITION OF 50 EACH
FABRICS BY RAF SIMONS FOR KVADRAT
IN COMBINATION WITH NATURAL CALFSKIN LEATHER
HANDCRAFTED IN GERMANY
EACH BAG INDIVIDUALISED BY SERIAL NUMBER AND
ITS EDITION NUMBER
WHERE I END AND YOU BEGIN
WHERE DO THINGS END AND WHERE DO THEY BEGIN? CAN AN OBJECT HAVE TWO BEGINNINGS, TWO ENDS? ARE THERE BOUNDARIES WITHIN ONE ENTIRETY?
Bag and accessory label TSATSAS addressed the above mentioned theme in its installation WHERE I END AND YOU BEGIN. Shown for the first time during Berliner Mode Salon 2016, the installation was also on display at the TSATSAS atelier in Frankfurt/Main in January 2017.
In every single one of their designs Esther and Dimitrios Tsatsas explore an object’s boundaries. Their bags and accessories, produced using precise patterns, are made up of countless individual pieces which are assembled using in a complex production process to create a coherent piece.
With WHERE I END AND YOU BEGIN, the colour of the leather becomes a medium for highlighting the transitions within the bags and accessories. Because, to date, all TSATSAS leather designs have been monochrome, this has hidden the fact that the products are made up of different sections.
However, using different colours for the various elements highlights that diversity, rendering the boundaries suddenly visible. Such boundaries are either called for by the design, as with the LUCID tote bag, where different shades of leather come together in the front and back, or are set by the designers on the basis of aesthetic considerations, as with the HAZE clutch bag.
TSATSAS FOR 10 BY YATZER
TSATSAS had the pleasure to be part of the first edition of 10 by Yatzer. The project of the global online destination for fine and applied arts Yatzer.com was launched on the occasion of Milan Design Week 2016 at Spazio Pontaccio, in the heart of Milans renowned art disctrict of Brera. 10 by Yatzer presented a collection of exceptional products which were sold through a pop-up shop.
Each of the 10 limited edition pieces created for this year’s collection were a unique collaboration with contemporary international designers and brands. The customizations of either existing or brand new products stood on the subject of “black/white/gold” and were available in a limited amount.
The participation of TSATSAS occured with a special edition of 20 pieces of the OTHER ONE pouch bag which has first been introduced as part of the TSATSAS collection at Paris Fashion Week in October 2014.
The special version of the fully reversible OTHER ONE unisex bag was customised for 10 by Yatzer in black calfskin and white lamb nappa leather with gold-toned hardware. Each item was debossed with its individual production number as well as its limited edition numbering for 10 by Yatzer.
www.yatzer.com
TSATSAS ATELIER
TSATSAS opened its new atelier and very first store in November 2015 in Frankfurt/Main. Boasting 100 square meters of floor space the rooms bring together sales area, showroom, model workshop and office facilities of the brand in a single location.
TSATSAS founders and owners Esther and Dimitrios Tsatsas themselves masterminded the Atelier’s concept and design. For their new space they completely gutted the building’s ground floor and designed interventions that carefully visually structure the space in different functional zones. The basic philosophy was not to place the rooms in competition with the products showcased in them, but to lend each individual zone its very own, unmistakable design feel. Simple materials such as plywood panels and industrial shelving were put to extraordinary use and finished with utmost precision, thereby forging a link to TSATSAS’ handcrafted fine leather goods.
Countless design icons have been given pride of place in the Atelier, including objects by Konstantin Grcic, Michael Anastassiades, Paolo Rizzatto or Le Corbusier, and by manufacturers such as Classicon, Nya Nordiska, Flos, Magis, Mattiazzi, Cassina and Plank.
TSATSAS AND VITSOE
British furniture maker Vitsoe welcomed the founders and designers of TSATSAS in their Munich showroom. The exhibition of the high-quality leather bags in conjunction with Vitsoe’s furniture collection following the original designs of Dieter Rams was on display in November 2014.
Frankfurt-based bag maker TSATSAS designs and produces elegant yet unassuming products that do not pander to passing fashion. Its consistent focus is to achieve a perfect balance between function, aesthetics and execution – a concept that makes Vitsœ and TSATSAS Besondere Weggefährten.
For 50 years, Vitsoe operates in the conviction that uncompromising quality in aesthetics, functionality and fabrication gives a design continuing relevance.
With Esther and Dimitrios Tsatsas, Vitsoe invited designers who face the challenge of the short-lived fashion market with the same standards of clarity in design and precise craftsmanship in the production: Linear forms in unusual cuts and the high materiality of the manually processed leather lend their designs an irresistibly unpretentious elegance.
From the reduction to the essentials arises an unassuming casualness that makes TSATSAS’ bags as well as Vitsoe’s furniture to discrete companions in everyday life.
www.vitsoe.com
TSATSAS AND RAMON HAINDL FOR AESTHETICS HABITAT
Bringing together what belongs together: TSATSAS and Ramon Haindl worked together on a collaboration initiated in 2014 by Aesthetics Habitat, an independent creation of genuine content in cooperation with brands and creative visionaries.
The project was coming from a like-minded neighbourhood as both, photographer Ramon Haindl and fine leather craftsmen TSATSAS, live and work in Frankfurt/Main. Subtle structures and a high level of attention to the characteristics of surface invite you to observe the fundamental significance of skin without the disturbance of color. A sensitive ensemble of details and protagonists embracing a simply perfect product.
KAGE FOR WALLPAPER* HANDMADE
As part of the “Wallpaper* Handmade“ exhibition 2013, TSATSAS presented the trolley suitcase KAGE designed specially for the project. The exhibition was shown at the Gallery Leclettico in Milan on the occasion of Salone Internazionale del Mobile.
KAGE (Japanese for “shadow”) is a symbiosis of luxury and function, of refined materials and practical use. Elegant travel in the late 19th century involved chests made fully of leather bearing the most intricate of brass fittings – KAGE brings this feel into the present in the form of a trolley suitcase that meets all today’s travel requirements while combining premium quality and high-grade materials.
The entire interior of the case is lined with the finest of pacific blue lamb nappa leather while the exterior boasts cowhide from Lombardy, Italy. All KAGE’s fittings are handmade from brass; likewise the entire leather case was crafted in Germany by hand in keeping with the long-standing crafts tradition.
KAGE complies with all the customary regulations on hand luggage.
In 2010, Wallpaper* magazine developed an ambitious, never-been-seen-before project based on the idea and notion that more and more people in today’s modern society were demanding a unique way to stand out from the crowd.
Through the essence of customisation, Wallpaper* initiated the Handmade project, bringing together the best of the global artisinal world, injecting a healthy dose of contemporary thinking to realise some unique one-off objects.
Wallpaper* has since commissioned some of the world’s finest craftsmen, designers, producers and manufacturers to create over 300 one-off pieces and products.
www.wallpaper.com