MycoWorks x paragone reveal women-made reishi™ objects at design miami.paris

mycoworks x paragone launch mycelium muse collection

Biotechnology company MycoWorks has joined forces with Paris-based design agency Paragone to launch the exclusive Mycelium Muse collection. Combining seven interior design objects by seven French women, this exhibition celebrates MycoWork’s groundbreaking mycelium-made material, Reishi™, and will be on view at Design Miami.Paris from October 15th to 20th, 2024. Here, the duo depicts the material as a modern muse for today’s generation of creatives — specifically, as a luxury mycelium leather that presents superior strength and durability while preserving its hand-feel.

all images courtesy MycoWorks and Paragone

SEVEN design objects, ONE canvas, Reishi™

For Mycelium Muse, the team at MycoWorks and the Paragone agency have collaborated with seven French women creatives. Some are architects (Sophie Dries, Marion Mailaender and Fanny Perrier), and interior designers (Joséphine Fossey), while others are visual artists (Sarah Valente and Pauline Guerrier), or artisans (Anna Le Corno). Together, they have crafted a series of forward-looking and poetic objects, ranging from screens to desks to lighting fixtures. Despite their distinct approaches, they share a common quest to deconstruct design norms and formalities, and introducing new conceptions of environmental durability and sustainable work. ‘These seven women embody the very essence of what it means to be a modern muse – creative, powerful and unafraid to push the boundaries of design,’ shares Guillaume de Saint Lager, Paragone founder.

Soft, yet supple. Reishi™ is a natural material developed by MycoWorks. Woven from mycelium, the root-like fungal network typically buried deep underground, Reishi™ is a cross between leather and fabric. Like leather, it can be transformed–dyed, embossed, varnished and finished–in a multitude of ways, while retaining the malleability and versatility of other noble fabrics. These impressive bio-properties will be on full display at the Design Miami.Paris program.

Khara by Sophie Dries

meet the seven women creatives at Design Miami.Paris 2024

To architect, designer, and decorator Sophie Dries, Reishi™ is a material that has already lived many lives. Naturally mottled, streaked and marked with irregular edges, the Reishi™ inspired her to create a brutalist object, Khara. Reishi™ is stitched like a spidery delicacy from a sleek metal frame structured from Corten tubes—a self-patinated metal with a protective rust coating widely used in Land Art—rendering an object that is both radical and primitive. Dries is a rising figure on the young international scene. Since launching her studio in 2014, Dries has delighted in a holistic approach to space, drawing on her passion for Arte Povera and the use of noble, natural materials– wood, stone, marble, metal– to create objects of unmistakable aesthetic brutality.

Undergrowth by Anna Le Corno

In designing Lampadaire Silencieux, artistic director Joséphine Fossey highlights the opalescence and ability of Reishi™ to diffuse a soft, warm light. The piece is simple, minimal and uncluttered. The lampshade’s stem and feet are structured in quadrilaterals, a rigorous approach that is gracefully countered by the sensuality of Reishi™’s texture. Fossey designs places, objects and brand identities. Her practice lies halfway between interior design and curation. Upstream of any project, she questions the history of places, immerses herself in their atmospheres, and considers their future uses in order to define global concepts.

In Greek mythology, the Hamadryades are wood nymphs, each bonded to a tree with whom they share a single destiny, from birth through old age. In her bas relief — Daphnée, The Metamorphosis — visual artist Pauline Guerrier pays tribute to the Hamadryades, carving an ode to Daphnée, the mythological figure who transforms herself into a tree: a forest of feminine curves, a base of Reishi™. Her father a sculptor, and her mother a choreographer, Guerrier was introduced very young to the pleasures of creating with her own hands. In 2009, she entered Giuseppe Penone’s studio at the Beaux-Arts de Paris before traveling the world to train with weavers, glassblowers, stone engravers and mosaicists. Today, she expresses herself through drawings and sculptures, as well as installations, performances and videos.

Aspen by Marion Mailaender

Moving on to the desk, Undergrowth, by artisan Anna Le Corno, its organic form evokes rough-hewn logs, ax-cut trunks and sharpened shingles. Built around taut lines, Farouche combined two natural materials whose beauty is derived from the imperfections and accidents inherent in their development: a Reishi™ sheathing and myrtle burr veneer. Trained as an architect, Le Corno perfected her cabinetmaking skills at the École Boulle, where she discovered laser cutting. She has taken an innovative look at marquetry, constantly experimenting with new techniques, and freely mixing wood species and leather into her craft. Whether assembling wall panels, headboards or sideboard, she undersigns her designs with her trademark, Farouche–wild, rabid, fierce.

Inspired by the ornamental screens of 1930s designers such as Jean-Michel Frank, interior architect Fanny Perrier has designed a six-panel Reishi™- covered screen on a solid, recessed base with silent glides. In its use as an ecological and virtuous covering, Reishi™ renews a typology of objects formerly made of parchment or leather. After working for Patrick Jouin and Joseph Dirand, Perrier founded her own agency in 2017. From boutiques for shoemaker Repetto and jeweler Viltier to restaurants such as Le Perchoir, requests quickly followed one after another for her keen eye. Her timeless, refined style makes the most of color, using touches of vintage furniture from the 1930s to the 1970s to render each space a story of its own.

A nomadic object par excellence, the fisherman’s stool, Aspen, is familiar, solid and practical. And yet, as she does, architect Marion Mailaender turns the design on its head. In pairing traditional techniques of sewing and sheathing with the more contemporary practice of laser-cutting, Mailaender developed a western-inspired ornamental fringe, to create two mischievous stools that bridge timeless design and a classic western flair. Born in Marseille’s Cité Radieuse, Mailaender works from her hometown, having founded her namesake agency in Paris in 2004. A fan of Italian design from the 1980s and contemporary art, she works on instinct. Daring to mix and match, she creates Dadaist objects that are as functional as they are narrative, inviting multiple interpretations.

Last but not least, visual artist and photographer Sarah Valente has created a monumental fresco using ten sheets of Reishi™ that have been painted, rubbed, soaked and folded. Valente’s non-figurative work, dubbed Magic Ancestors, is inspired by motifs borrowed from the forest’s flora and fauna. Ultraviolet light unearths a second layer to her work: in the darkness, one can find a luminescent and enchanting network of mycelium emerges. Valente’s subject is the richness of nature. She is fascinated by humanity’s connection with the forest, its spiritual implications and the role of plants in the evolution of our species. Her visuals capture the beauty of the jungle, birds, beehives and the Amazon.

Lampadaire Silencieux by Joséphine Fossey