The New Ace Hotel’s Furniture Collection Has Us Totally Inspired
Leave it to the Ace Hotel Group to create a totally crave-worthy furniture collection in the process of debuting their latest hotel, Ace Hotel Sydney. The indie-darling hotel group has long been a major sources of inspiration for design aficionados and their latest hotel is no exception. The Ace called on Australian designer Fiona Lynch to collaborate on the restaurant interiors — and in the process a new furniture line was born.
The collection came to fruition after Lynch’s studio designed the restaurant and rooftop. As for inspiration, Lynch cites visits to the Noguchi Museum in New York, as well as Frank Lloyd Wright’s Hollyhock house. The pieces in the collection are highly graphic and geometric, made to be mixed and matched with each other and other furniture.
Not only is the new furniture line stunning, but Lynch also kept sustainability top of mind throughout the entirety of fabrication process. The pieces are made from reclaimed timber, offcut pieces of glass, and upholstered in fabric spattered with a very particular and special pigment: waste metals and bricks from the Ace’s construction site, which were ground into pigments and hand-splattered onto Belgian linen. The upholstery is reminiscent of a painter’s drop cloth, with irregular splatters and drips. All those sustainable, upcycled materials got me dreaming of DIYing.
As someone for whom Lynch’s line is well out of budget, I couldn’t help imagining a way to recreate this cool collection. If you’ve got some woodworking experience, the wooden elements can be DIYed. However it’s the splattered upholstery that really caught my attention. The original cushions and pillows for the collection are made with Belgian linen, but a more affordable option is actually to go back to the inspiration behind the pieces — an actual drop cloth.
A canvas drop cloth can be easily fashioned into a loose slipcover or sewn into a pillow cover for an existing insert, or you can purchase a linen pillow cover to work with instead. All that’s left to do is to splatter your pillow cover with paint. (Martha Stewart Living magazine (RIP) suggests mixing one part fabric medium and two parts fabric paint in a squeeze bottle and dripping it onto the fabric). Pro tip: If you’re splattering a pillow cover, insert a piece of cardboard inside to prevent paint or pigment from bleeding onto the backside. If you’re really daring, you could even splatter acrylic paint directly onto an upholstered piece that’s seen better days!
If you make it to Sydney (or any other of the Ace Hotel’s locations), consider the cost of a stay as more than a place to rest your head: It might just be inspiration for your next home project!