Gateway room divider, in collaboration with Salome Chigilashvili, features embroidery on polymer and plaster. Shown with the pair’s Sculptural Chairs I and III.
Gateway room divider, in collaboration with Salome Chigilashvili, features embroidery on polymer and plaster. Shown with the pair’s Sculptural Chairs I and III.

October 26, 2021

Words: Rebecca N. Thienes

Photography: Adrianna Glaviano

Rooms Studio’s ‘Distant Symphony’ Exhibition

The Tbilisi-based design atelier (founded in 2007) lands in New York City with an exhibition of recent works. Located in Emma Scully Gallery nestled on the ground floor of a grand building on the Upper East Side, the namesake gallerist clad the walls in jute fabric shipped from Paris, a nod to pre-war gallery wall treatments and precursor to modern-day obligatory all-white spaces. The textured treatment layers onto the warmth of works in beeswax with the accompanying sweet smell, the Iron Secret cabinet in blackened, embossed copper and plywood, and a side table mixing basalt and stainless steel.

Nata Janberidze and Keti Toloraia comprise Rooms Studio, named for the basic unit of interior space. Beginning in the antechamber, polaroids, sketches, trinkets, and talismans from the duo set a reflective tone after pandemic isolation. The main gallery hosts pieces by collaborating artists, such as Shotiko Aptsiauri’s wax stool and Salome Chigilashvili’s impressive screen in using embroidery on plastered boards. This tendency towards group work references such Georgian folk practices as polyphonic singing, here reinterpreted as a design endeavor and explaining the show’s title “Distant Symphony.” Rooms Studios’s own curvilinear wooden chairs from their Wild Minimalism collection further evoke the primeval while their wooden chess table takes inspiration from Soviet-era public furniture still found in Tbilisi. The exhibition is on view through November 20, 2021.

Keti Toloraia and Nata Janberidze of Rooms Studio with some of the work from Distant Symphony.
Keti Toloraia and Nata Janberidze of Rooms Studio with some of the work from Distant Symphony.
A collaboration with Shotiko Aptsiauri, the Sacral Geometry beeswax stool shown with the duo’s Oversized chess table in reclaimed wood.
A collaboration with Shotiko Aptsiauri, the Sacral Geometry beeswax stool shown with the duo’s Oversized chess table in reclaimed wood.
Vessel On The Road, a tapestry in collaboration with cc-tapis pairs with the designers’s Triple Bench in painted oak and stainless steel and their Supra coffee table in natural river stone, terrazzo and oak.
Vessel On The Road, a tapestry in collaboration with cc-tapis pairs with the designers’s Triple Bench in painted oak and stainless steel and their Supra coffee table in natural river stone, terrazzo and oak.
Gateway room divider, in collaboration with Salome Chigilashvili, features embroidery on polymer and plaster. Shown with the pair’s Sculptural Chairs I and III.
Gateway room divider, in collaboration with Salome Chigilashvili, features embroidery on polymer and plaster. Shown with the pair’s Sculptural Chairs I and III.
Emma Scully chose to cover the walls and hang curtains in textural French jute.
Emma Scully chose to cover the walls and hang curtains in textural French jute.
Rooms Studios’s Half Moon coffee table in stainless steel and basalt stone.
Rooms Studios’s Half Moon coffee table in stainless steel and basalt stone.
The designers’ sketches and precious artifacts in the antechamber.
The designers’ sketches and precious artifacts in the antechamber.
The Iron Secret cabinet, adorned with sculptural imagery, surprises with its pale pink interior.
The Iron Secret cabinet, adorned with sculptural imagery, surprises with its pale pink interior.

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