Design partnership, Fredrikson Stallard, are showing a new collection of highly-decorated vases at David Gill Galleries in London’s Vauxhall. The collection, called Gasoline Garden, comprises fifteen unique pieces adorned with high octane imagery of pin-up girls wreathed in smoke and wrapped around traditional Chinese vase forms.

‘GASOLINE GARDEN,’  20th November – 22nd December 2009

DAVID GILL GALLERIES

3 Loughborough Street, London SE11 5RB (020 7793 1100)

For this collection, the duo have consciously brought together two deeply rooted cultural practices – traditional Chinese vase making and the North American art of airbrushing and hot rod imagery. The vases are layered with imagery – the girls are smouldering and sinuous as they stretch across the curves of the vases, licked by flames and smoke and full of female empowerment. Bold metallic streaks complete the designs.

In the words of the designers, “We are creating a cultural collision. But in both cases the work is about status. In China, the vase was a symbol of power and wealth and in 20th Century America, the car fulfilled the same role. But while the Chinese decorated their vases with dragons and flames, the American hot rod painters went for sexy girls and smoke.”

Dragons represented  many things to the dynastic Chinese, including luck, happiness and heroism, while the image of pin-up icon Rita Hayworth adorned the nose of American fighter planes to help pilots on their way.

The vases were made in finest porcelain by traditional Chinese makers, and then airbrushed in the UK by an artist who has devoted his life to perfecting the art of airbrushing.

All images courtesy of David Gill Galleries. Copyright Thomas Brown.