Selected Hotel projects
Inside a Commission
Fairmont Hanoi
What does it mean to make art in a city a thousand years deep? The Fairmont Hanoi commission demanded we find out, through archives, craft villages, and a medium asked to do more than it usually does.
The Heritage of Thăng Long
Thăng Long, the rising dragon, is the ancient name of Hanoi, given by Emperor Lý Thái Tổ when he established it as the imperial capital in 1010. Before commissioning a single piece, we spent weeks in archives: bronze drums, ceramics of the Lý and Trần courts, lacquered altar pieces of the Lê dynasty workshops.
Historical grounding is what gives art its weight. The lacquerwork tradition of the Red River Delta carries a lineage traceable to at least the fifteenth century. We did not borrow from it. We studied it, then gave the artisans a brief worthy of what they already knew.
Working with the villages
The lacquerwork was produced in our workshop in Vietnam, where technique is passed on through apprenticeship. These are working studios: noisy, practical places where the smell of lacquer resin is constant.
Twenty or thirty layers, each sanded before the next: it takes a career to master. Our relationship with these workshops is collaborative: we arrive knowing what the workshop is genuinely capable of, and we stay through the process. The result is work that could not be made anywhere else, at any price.
Mixed media, challenged tradition
Lacquer on metal. Lacquer into deeply carved wood at a complexity classical practice would not have attempted. Works interrupted by bronze, copper, and eggshell, in deliberate tension between what the medium is and what it has been asked to do. The result carries the depth of classical Vietnamese lacquerwork in a language that is entirely contemporary.
How we work
From first brief to final handover
One team carries each commission from the first site visit to the last piece on the wall, with clear documents at every stage for your design, procurement and operations teams.
Brief & site study
We walk the site, read the drawings, and listen to the design team and the operator. From this we shape an art strategy for the property: its narrative, its zones, its budget and its timeline.
Concept & curation
A concept presentation for every area, with artists, mediums and placements, refined with you until it is approved.
BOQ & specification
Every piece is itemised in a bill of quantities and documented in a specification book, with dimensions, materials, framing and fixing, ready for budgeting or tender.
Production & quality control
Works are made by our artists, partner workshops and our own workshop. Our team inspects each piece at the workshop before it leaves for site.
Installation & handover
We install and sign off each area with your team, then hand over a complete record of the collection: a schedule of every piece as installed, with its location, materials and dimensions.
New commissions