Designer | Exhibitions and Shows | Fuorisalone | Fuorisalone Milan Design Week | Milan Design Week | Producer | Product
As we believe we've said before it is always especially pleasing when a designer you first got to know as an unkempt, idealist student, finally signs their first serious contract with a major manufacturer and so sets of a, hopefully, long and successful career.
Similarly it is always very pleasing to watch a newly established business grow and develop; especially when it's one established with the goal of advancing contemporary design and the designer's lot rather than simply generating a fab annual return, sorry, a fat annual return, for the shareholders.
Established in January 2010 by Brooklyn designer Jason Miller, Roll & Hill was born of a desire to both develop high-quality contemporary lighting with a North American accent and also to help advance the status, position and for all opportunities for contemporary US designers.
Two years ago Roll and Hill took their first, tentative, steps towards Europe with a small show in Milan's Zona Tortona, this year they are showing at the bi-annual Euroluce trade fair, the lighting section of Saloni Milano.
And so the biggest and most important lightning platform during Milan Design Week. And a sign of just how far Roll & Hill have come.
Our, admittedly slightly unhealthy, obsession with Roll & Hill started before the company even existed: namely when we saw Jason Miller's Modo Chandelier at ICFF 2009, a lamp that immediately caught our imagination and hasn't left us in peace since.
Modo was subsequently one of the five pillars of the original Roll & Hill collection along with Himmeli by Paul Loebach, Excel by Rich Brilliant Willing, Agnes by Lindsey Adelman and Jason Miller's almost too kitsch for this world Superordinate Antler.
If there was one object missing from "Isn’t it romantic?" at the Museum für Angewandte Kunst Köln.....
In the intervening three years the Roll & Hill collection has grown steadily and now comprises some 15 product families from 9 designers, including with Canadian born, Eindhoven educated Lukas Peet the first non-US collaborator.
In Milan Roll & Hill were/are presenting a nice cross section of their current programme, including Stella Triangle by Rosie Li, Endless by Jason Miller and Counterweight by Fort Standard.
And the Modo Chandelier in a magnificent 6 sided, 21 globe combination.
One of the aspects of the Roll & Hill range that has always appealed to us is the unapologetic feeling of a return to the early days of Art Deco evoked by the majority of the objects.
Brass, glass, ceramic, steel, marble and wood combine to create objects whose opulence belies a simplicity and sobriety that would put your average Calvinist too shame. And which almost demand that you start dancing a Charleston.
Back in 2009 we noted how, for us, Jason Miller's furniture evoked the popular image most Europeans have of late 1970s urban America. The Roll & Hill collection wouldn't look out of place in a late 1920s Manhattan apartment block.
Obviously we're generalising a little, and for all the works from Jonah Takagi and Rich Brilliant Willing contrast with the above to give the Roll & Hill collection a much more varied and balanced character.
It's fair to say that Roll & Hill lamps aren't the sort of objects you can buy with whatever loose change you may be fortunate enough to find down the back of your sofa.
However, as highly individual pieces made from quality materials in small workshops in Brooklyn and Long Island, you do genuinely get what you pay for.
In America the Roll & Hill distribution network is well established, in Europe there is still "a little bit" of work to be done.
It is to be hoped that after Euroluce Roll & Hill lighting will be more widely available here, and that even more of you can get the chance to understand, and hopefully share, our obsession.
