CHIAROSCURO

CHIAROSCURO by Dimitrios Tsatsas | TSATSAS

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.

CHIAROSCURO by Dimitrios Tsatsas — HAZE bicolour clutch bag | TSATSAS
CHIAROSCURO by Dimitrios Tsatsas — TAPE XS bicolour clutch bag | TSATSAS
CHIAROSCURO by Dimitrios Tsatsas — OLIVE bicolour shoulder bag | TSATSAS
CHIAROSCURO by Dimitrios Tsatsas — HAZE bicolour clutch bag | TSATSAS
CHIAROSCURO by Dimitrios Tsatsas | TSATSAS
CHIAROSCURO by Dimitrios Tsatsas — HAZE and OLIVE bicolour bags | TSATSAS

931

TSATSAS 931 BAG — DESIGN DIETER RAMS

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.

TSATSAS 931 BAG — DESIGN DIETER RAMS
TSATSAS 931 BAG — DESIGN DIETER RAMS
TSATSAS 931 BAG — DESIGN DIETER RAMS
TSATSAS 931 BAG — DESIGN DIETER RAMS
TSATSAS 931 BAG — DESIGN DIETER RAMS
TSATSAS 931 BAG — DESIGN DIETER RAMS
TSATSAS 931 BAG — DESIGN DIETER RAMS
TSATSAS 931 BAG — DESIGN DIETER RAMS
TSATSAS 931 BAG — DESIGN DIETER RAMS
TSATSAS 931 BAG — DESIGN DIETER RAMS

TSATSAS 931 BAG — DESIGN DIETER RAMS

TSATSAS 931 BAG — DESIGN DIETER RAMS

AROSE

AROSE — a project byTSATSAS and Deutsche & Japaner

“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

AROSE — a project byTSATSAS and Deutsche & Japaner
AROSE — a project byTSATSAS and Deutsche & Japaner
AROSE — a project byTSATSAS and Deutsche & Japaner
AROSE — a project byTSATSAS and Deutsche & Japaner
AROSE — a project byTSATSAS and Deutsche & Japaner
AROSE — a project byTSATSAS and Deutsche & Japaner
TSATSAS and Deutsche & Japaner | AROSE

EDITION FERDINAND KRAMER® 1963

TSATSAS 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.

TSATSAS Edition Ferdinand Kramer 1963
TSATSAS Edition Ferdinand Kramer 1963
TSATSAS Edition Ferdinand Kramer 1963

“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

TSATSAS Edition Ferdinand Kramer 1963
TSATSAS Edition Ferdinand Kramer 1963
TSATSAS Edition Ferdinand Kramer 1963
TSATSAS Edition Ferdinand Kramer 1963
TSATSAS Edition Ferdinand Kramer 1963
TSATSAS Edition Ferdinand Kramer 1963
TSATSAS Edition Ferdinand Kramer 1963
TSATSAS Edition Ferdinand Kramer 1963
TSATSAS Edition Ferdinand Kramer 1963
TSATSAS Edition Ferdinand Kramer 1963

CONSTANT COMPANIONS

Constant Companions Publication | TSATSAS

“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

Constant Companions Publication | TSATSAS
Constant Companions Publication | TSATSAS
Constant Companions Publication | TSATSAS
Constant Companions Publication | TSATSAS
Constant Companions Publication | TSATSAS
Constant Companions Instalation | TSATSAS
Constant Companions Instalation | TSATSAS
Constant Companions Instalation | TSATSAS
Constant Companions Instalation | TSATSAS

CLOSER

TSATSAS 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.

TSATSAS CLOSER
TSATSAS CLOSER
TSATSAS CLOSER
TSATSAS CLOSER
TSATSAS CLOSER
TSATSAS CLOSER
TSATSAS CLOSER
TSATSAS CLOSER
TSATSAS CLOSER
TSATSAS CLOSER
TSATSAS CLOSER