In Conversation with SP01 Co-founder Matt Lorrain

On his recent visit to Hong Kong, we met with Lorrain to talk about his vision for the brand, the Australia-Italy connection and his belief that good design should have multiple layers of messaging

Matt Lorrain outside the Archetypal showroom in Hong Kong. Image by Jeremy Smart

Design Anthology: What led you to starting SP01, coming from a furniture retail background? 

Matt Lorrain: There was a small group of us who’d been working together for over a decade, with several top international brands. We managed to get backing from a publicly listed company, and so it was just a great opportunity for us to be able to start something. But we wanted to do something more significant than just an Australian furniture brand offering Australian-made pieces. We this great resource that we could tap into, we had connections in Italy, and we knew that our brand would be sharing showroom space with high-end Italian brands, so we decided to do it there. 

Working with these brands for so long informed a lot of our approach and our understanding of quality. In a way, since we had such a great core group of people and we’d worked together for so long, when the opportunity was presented to us, it felt right because we all had defined roles already. There was me, working in the creative space, our operations manager, marketing manager and our CEO — it’s a bit of a dream team. 

That ‘creative space’ was interior design, so how does that inform your perspective as SP01’s creative director?

I studied furniture design at RMIT, but I started working in interiors right after graduating. I was working independently for several years, doing either residential or hospitality projects, and so it's been my whole career, I guess. I think there’s so much crossover — even now I produce all the imagery that you see online or in our brochures, which involves interior styling, too. I’ll still occasionally do an interior project for somebody that I love. 

The forms and the shapes that I work with when designing a new object often end up in an interior space and vice versa. And of course, architectural elements can also inform furniture design. For example, the Michelle chair, which we launched in Milan earlier this year, has a really strong, arched frame, and when they’re lined up next to each other they look almost like a classical colonnade. So there's always architecture in furniture and furniture within architecture. 

We spoke briefly just now about the Italy-Australia connection — what do you think are some of the unique characteristics of this relationship? 

One of the reasons that we wanted to start SP01 was because we didn't want to be siloed into one kind of ‘Italian’ or ‘Danish’ or ‘Japanese’ style — we wanted to be a bit more flexible. I think coming from Australia gives us a great perspective and puts us in a good position to do that because it is so multicultural, and you’re exposed to so much. I guess we're a little bit less restrained, we don't have so many rules or things that are set in stone, so we can approach it from a more flexible point of view. That was an important factor for us in starting the brand, that we could be responsive and weren’t limited to working within these confined streams. 

In terms of the brand, I often think about design as levels of messaging. For example, when you first see a chair, you see it one way but then when you go back and have a second look, you see another level of detail. The qualities we aim to touch on will sometimes have a cultural context, like the Thomas chair by Metrica, which has this slice on the arm and where it terminates at the front actually looks a bit like a knuckle — it's very refined and very reduced, but almost like a silhouette of a Ming chair, but it’s still contemporary and new. Sometimes there’s an allusion to a cultural element, and sometimes it's about a different design era. If you look at some of our pieces, there are subtle references to mid-century, Art Deco, or even something a little 80s. We try to lightly touch on these things and have various levels of information within our design language and collections, but without being ‘retro’ or gimmicky. And that’s the balance for us — it’s quite a broad range of elements that we’re working with, but I think it works well for us and I think Australians are quite comfortable dealing with all of that. 

 You talk about an Australian perspective — what defines that?

If you look at Australian interiors and architecture, there's a really comfortable handle on materiality. We’re quite confident with natural materials, and we don't tend to overdo things or overdress them, so there’s definitely a simplicity and simple expression of materials. 

Do you think this contributes to pieces being relevant in a variety of settings and contexts, which is a key aspect of your collections? What do you think are some of the qualities that lead to this kind of broad appeal and flexibility? 

As I said before, I really like the messaging in design — all the things that you might not really understand when you first look at or use something. There are usually so many symbols and messages. In terms of our design language, when we refer to these iconic design eras I think people can somehow connect with it. So, we have that happening on one level, but then on the other level we have these different cultural influences. And because of our background and the fact that our understanding of design is influenced by an Italian style, because that's what we were so accustomed to working with, you then have these multiple layers. It’s something that’s perhaps more a mixture of Asian and Italian detailing, which is our world, and then these other levels that subtly reference design history. 

I think once you bring that all together, the result is a piece that can work in any sort of environment, because it's not just a simple one-liner, it has layers and complexity to it.

Can you talk a bit about the production process in Italy and the craftspeople and studios you work with?

Well, the geographic location makes sense because producing in Italy means we can export to anywhere in the world, whereas exporting from Australia is still a challenge.

Working with Italians is quite a beautiful thing because they have an atelier-style approach to things and they’re specialists. We do a lot of wood production, for example, but the people who make tables aren’t the same people who make chairs. But the nice thing is that even when you have a piece that requires multiple supply chains and you might need three different people to come together to make one piece, they’re still willing to work with each other. One workshop will work with another workshop and another workshop, and they’ll take joint responsibility to make sure that in the end you get a perfect product. So there’s that atelier approach, which is still quite traditional, and you’re working with a network of people. That’s a great way to work because I think if you go to larger production sites, maybe in the States or China, or even in Australia in a way, people are a bit risk-averse and they don't want to take joint responsibility to produce a part of a thing — they want to produce that thing. And that’s somewhat limiting because you don’t get the same level of specialisation from the different experts. That’s why production in Italy still has that something, which is very hard to replicate. 

If you had to choose a piece that exemplifies SP01’s approach is there something that comes to mind? 

I really love the new Michelle chairs by Tim Rundle, which I mentioned earlier. I like them because you’re not quite sure which era to place them in, and I think that the bigger section of tube, especially in gold or the black chrome finish, feels like it could a bit 80s, which is not an era people associate with high-end design, though it was a fair while ago and I think we’re now ready to make that association. And the way we shot it involved two versions, one hard and the other softer and earthier. 

The chair represents a few things. The first is that as a brand we’re becoming more confident in our direction, and we’re happy to push things a bit. We’re not playing it safe with a piece like this. It’s a very simple geometry, but imagine when you have them around a long communal table and they create this repeated, rhythmic arch pattern that evokes classic Greek architecture. And there’s something soothing about the symmetry and rhythm of the arch-circle-arch-circle. I love this piece — there will be a set of them coming to my apartment for sure. 

As told to / Simone Schultz
Images / Courtesy of SP01

Tom Fereday’s Jeanette tables for SP01

The Jeanette sofa

The Jeanette armchair

Lounge chairs and sofa from Fereday’s Jeanette collection

Thomas chairs and barstool, designed by Metrica

The Thomas barstool

Tim Rundle’s Michelle stool

The Michelle stool and chair

Jeanette bar stools alongside Michelle stool and chairs