Bespoke & the art of work

INTERIORS: Susan Zelouf and Michael Bell have been creating beautifully crafted furniture for the past 20 years. Much of it ends up abroad, but next month, their best pieces go on show at Farmleigh, writes KEVIN COURTNEY

THERE’S A LARGE BLACK mamba outside the studios of Susan Zelouf and Michael Bell, coiled and ready to strike. It’s actually a table, but it certainly looks striking, and slightly menacing, with its impenetrable black sheen and central spine curving up through the smoothly polished, kidney-shaped tabletop. I’d feel a bit creepy eating my tea off it – not to mention the worry about putting a scratch on that high-gloss finish.

It’s not just a table, though – it’s a Zelouf Bell table, and that signifies a lot more than just something to put in your kitchen or sittingroom. For 20 years now, this funky couple have been designing and making beautifully crafted hand-made furniture to order, each piece the product of a fertile imagination and highly skilled handiwork, which goes beyond the wow factor and into the realm of the wondrous.

And you’ll need a big budget if you want to commission this couple to make you a piece. Seventeen grand will get you a Black Mamba of your own to scare visitors with. If that seems a tad high, you could go for their Koi Noir coffee table in bog oak, inlaid with glistening fish-like marquetry, a snip at €15,000. But what’s really jawdropping is that you can see every penny up there in the sheen – the work is so intricate and beautifully crafted, you couldn’t imagine it costing anything less. We’re not in Ikea any more, Toto.

What’s also astonishing is that neither Zelouf nor Bell have had any formal training. Zelouf made a living as a singer and voiceover artist, while Bell was a rep for a tobacco company. But, inspired by Zelouf, he ditched the suit and followed his dream, which was, simply, to make beautiful things.

“I love metalwork and I loved woodwork at school but, like most kids of my age, I was told it was blue-collar work and I should be doing white-collar work. But what I really wanted was to work with my hands – so I had a career change at 35.” Bell and his craftspeople, based in a workshop down a country lane in Co Laois, often take weeks to perfect a single piece.

They show me a solid wood hall table that has a jagged scar running down its length – achieved by stabbing deftly at the tabletop with a chainsaw. The result is startling and strangely beautiful – a rugged landscape of hills and valleys framed by a perfectly flat expanse. Belfast-born Bell calls the technique “scarring and healing”. Another table has had its top removed, cut into smaller shapes and randomly put back together, complete with gaps where your pen, mobile phone or cuppa could easily fall. It’s playful but exudes class.

As I step inside the studio – an apartment in Kilmainham the couple use as a showroom and to host dinner parties when they’re in town – I’m greeted with more fabulous furniture. I hang my coat on a rack punctuated by vintage typewriter key hooks. Beside it is a coat stand made of wenge with hooks made of old cash-register keys, all held firm by a heavy steel base that looks as if it was plundered from a pylon – it was – and, beside that, a chair whose pockmarked back looks like the slabs of metal tiling found on a factory floor – they were. These are part of the duo’s “found” collection, made by taking materials from the world of industry and putting them to a different, infinitely more appealing use.

To celebrate their 20th year in the fine furniture business, Zelouf and Bell will hold a retrospective exhibition in Farmleigh in Dublin’s Phoenix Park from May 4th to 20th.

“We’re fortunate that, over our 20 years in the business, we’ve got a lot of great clients and they’re still coming back,” says Bell.

Putting together the exhibition is proving to be a huge logistical undertaking. The couple make their pieces by commission and their work is scattered around the world, in corporate offices, embassies, private residences and even in churches. For this retrospective, they’re borrowing some of their key pieces to show. It’ll be worth the trouble; visitors will get a unique picture of the Zelouf and Bell aesthetic and see what it is that makes this couple’s work so special.

To open this unique retrospective, the couple has made a very leftfield choice – the Irish couturier Peter O’Brien.

“You need people who believe in you, especially when people are terrified to buy,” says Zelouf. “It’s a hard thing to not go for the cheapest option, it’s hard to buy Irish, or instead of buying 10 cheap sweaters, to buy just one that costs a lot. It’s a hard mentality to have.

“That’s why we chose Peter O’Brien. Because Peter is couture, and we would say we make limited-edition couture furniture. And of course I love fashion . . . we’re very inspired by furniture that’s come before us, traditional techniques that have come before us, architecture, buildings, paintings, fabric . . . even that Black Mamba out there, we were looking at Gareth Pugh, a cutting-edge British designer who did a lot of deconstructed corsetry, things that have sections like carapaces, insect-like things.

“The kind of things that interest us make their way into the furniture, and I love Peter because he’s got the couture, he’s worked at the houses that don’t have sewing machines, that do it by hand, one-off pieces, the highest quality, really wonderful creativity, but he’s also made collections for A|Wear and Arnotts and costumes for theatre. He resonates with us on so many levels.”

One piece that is bound to get visitors talking is the couple’s celebrated Famine Larder, a simple, beautifully made European oak cupboard featuring a figure stencilled on each door by the artist and activist Will St Leger. At first, the figures look like hungry peasants shuffling out of the historical mist; it’s only when you look a bit closer you see one is carrying a bag of produce from Fallon Byrne and the other is toting a handbag dog. The Famine Larder is currently on show at Commemorate 2012 at Space Craft in Belfast until next Saturday.

“We love collaborating with different artists because they bring an extra dimension,” says Zelouf. “And, more often than not, what they do will completely transform the piece and make it into a work of art.” One such transformation occurred when they asked the painter Martin Finnin to take his brush – and imagination – to a chest of drawers they’d made. The result is the Tree Trunk Trip Tallboy, a wild, aquatic swirl of colour that conjures up an undersea fairy forest.

Another piece that brings together functionality and fine art is a cherry writing-desk featuring calligraphy by Irish artist Denis Brown in ink, paint and even Letraset. But they’re not just random words – they’re excerpts from the works of Joyce. Who could fail to be inspired when sitting down to write at that desk? Bell admits he is often apprehensive about some of Zelouf’s more outré ideas, but he completely trusts her instinct.

“You wouldn’t be able to blink and Susan would have 10 ideas thrown at you. All you need is just one, a kernel, and you take it from there. It’s great to have someone who can think outside the box and have an endless stream of ideas for a possible solution. And you’ll say no, no, that won’t work, and then you’ll start thinking, well, maybe it might work. That’s been the exciting part of this collaboration – and also the terrifying part.” Both agree that their different approaches – Bell’s practical, roll-up-your-sleeves Northern Irish ethic, and Zelouf’s wild, creative New York vision – complement each other to make their partnership a successful one, on both a personal and professional level.

The couple first met in Rome – Bell came across Susan singing at a cafe on the Via Veneto.

“He sat down and asked me would I like a glass of champagne,” recalls Zelouf. “And I said yes, and what would you like to hear? And he said, a happy ballad. I loved that answer. Ballads are usually sad, so that was intriguing. So I sang Embraceable You, and it all started.”

The couple settled in Bell’s native Belfast and began working from the back of their terraced house, making “rustic” furniture. The Farmleigh exhibition will feature their first chair, made from bony wood they found in a forest. They moved South and found the Crafts Council very amenable to showing their work, so decided to stay. Their first big commission was designing two boardroom tables for Aer Rianta, which they made to look like giant turbine engines.

While Bell made furniture, Zelouf found work in RTÉ, doing voiceovers and recorded segments. Eventually, she found herself drawn into her partner’s business, though she had no design background.

“I always felt embarrassed that I hadn’t trained, that my only background was in theatre,” she says. “But my family always loved design and we lived in grand houses with some interesting furniture. As the projects became bigger, I got more involved. Often I’ll come up with totally wild things and my influences come from everywhere. I scared Michael a lot sometimes.

“I think now there’s an implicit trust in the way we work. I’m not a maker but I’ve been out in the workshop for 20 years, and I know how things are made. I think like a writer – I like to think how things resonate on different levels. It’s not just a piece of furniture. I think that people get that from the piece, that it was something that was well loved – and was made with love.”