Ashe + Leandro Launches a Quietly Beautiful Furniture Collection

Hadley Keller
Updated

In the era of Instagram and Amazon Prime, we seem to trade in speed and attention-grabbing gimmicks. That's perhaps what makes Ruemmler, a furniture line by Ashe + Leandro's Ariel Ashe, Reinaldo Leandro, and Mia Dalton—a onetime firm member who now works on Ruemmler exclusively—so refreshing. Much like the interiors work of Ashe + Leandro, the line forgoes any kind of flashy glamour in favor of a more quiet beauty, based on simple shape and slow patina. And its founders took no rush to release it, laboring carefully over the collection to achieve the perfect mix of pieces.

"We were really critical about every piece we designed, especially for this first launch," says Leandro of the ten-piece line, which includes furniture, rugs, and lighting. "If we didn't feel strongly about something, we usually edited it out. We wanted to have a good range within the field but all very manicured and familial to each other."

Of the dining table, Dalton says, "For a long time, design was super minimal and kind of chunky, really masculine; and there were and are still a lot of really beautiful thick wood tables. So we thought, Let's try to design something that's a little more delicate but still is substantial and works for a family or people who will use it every day." The table is topped in cane, which, she continues, "is something you see all the time in the antique world, but for some reason it's not as often implemented in the contemporary market. If you do, it's as a detail. This table really lets the caning speak for itself." The pendant above is made of silk.

The trio has been unofficially working on the collection, which debuted this week at Michael Bargo's gallery space, for close to six years, since Dalton first started with the firm (which then included just the three of them). "All along, there had been talk of eventually doing a furniture line," Dalton recalls. "We saved vintage things that we thought we'd want to see on the market now, and these were always in the background of our design work."

After several years of doing custom work for clients, the time seemed right to bring the furniture line to fruition. In Dalton, Ashe and Leandro found the right balance of someone who understood the firm's look and had an outside perspective. "We thought that was just perfect, to have this person who sort of grew up in the DNA of Ashe + Leandro and also would infuse it with her own creative vision, which we trust so much," says Leandro.

On the choice of silk for the lighting, Dalton says, "It's such an old material that's been around for so many years, but in recent history the trend has gone more towards minimal, sleek globes. So we wondered what could be different. Eventually, silk will deteriorate, but before then it becomes interesting with age and it has a story. It's not meant to be super pristine and perfect." The rugs, also silk, are made in India; all other items are made in Brooklyn.

Still, the process was deeply collaborative. "It became about taking all the ideas we'd had and things we'd saved and figuring out what made sense for a cohesive collection," Dalton recalls. "We all had all this stuff that we thought was great, but we wanted to boil it down to something that equally represented all of us and something that worked as a cohesive unit."

"We talked a lot about this honesty of materials, the tension within the materials, the dichotomies between warm and cool of metal and wood, the straight line versus a curve," Leandro recalls. "We sort of refined that until we finally landed on these ten pieces that we felt carry some weight. We didn't want a piece that, looking back, was 'so 2018.' We wanted a piece that would age well."

To achieve that, they looked to natural materials that would welcome a patina and simple shapes that defy categorization into any one style. "They're interesting but not wild; they have architectural lines but aren't ornate or overly minimalist," explains Dalton.

"A lot of the designers we looked at as inspiration, even the ones who were furniture designers, their roots were in architecture," Leandro says. "The dining chairs are very Carlo Scarpa–inspired, for example."

Leather armchairs. "We wanted to work with the untreated leather because old leather has such an authentic look," Dalton says.
Leather armchairs. "We wanted to work with the untreated leather because old leather has such an authentic look," Dalton says.

As interior designers, the three were also wise to creating pieces that could exist in a wide range of projects (and, indeed, have been "beta"-testing the pieces in their own projects for quite some time). "We wanted to establish a key grouping of items that we felt worked really good together and looked just as good standing alone as statement pieces as in the background of people's existing collections of furniture," Dalton explains. "That's why we focused on materials that would look better with age, so they can work with someone's collection over time. It's so much better to design something that will shift with someone's taste and other things they acquire. If you acquire something and you give it that character, it feels so much more personal as opposed to buying it as an antique."

Before setting up the furniture in Bargo's space, Ashe, Leandro, and Dalton photographed it in a vastly different one. "We had them in this old French farmhouse," Leandro says. "Then the Michael Bargo space felt much more 'downtown.' We saw that it can work in any setting."

Fans of Ashe + Leandro, the firm, might wonder why a studio of such repute would release a line under a completely separate name—indeed, company. "Having it be a separate company really gave us the freedom to make the pieces how they want to be and not necessarily have it have to tie back into the firm's aesthetic or projects," says Dalton. "It's almost a freedom to be more critical of the aesthetic."

Adds Leandro: "It very much has our Ashe + Leandro DNA, but we can also use it as a tool to explore other concepts."

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