Hand Crafted Design
The legendary ‘ Less is More’ of Adolf Loss is always present in Elena Vandelli Stavropoulou’s architectural work and her handcrafted objects' design.
Elena Vandelli Stavropoulou still believes that architecture have the power, through innovative, timeless and sustainable design, to improve our environment, our lives and consequently our future.
By becoming an architect, Elena Vandelli Stavropoulou fulfilled her need for design and creation, especially when projects allow her to combine designing and making things by hand. She has a strong passion for handcrafted objects that provide her with an immediate satisfaction, thanks to the unique process of passing from the idea to the final material object.
Elena designs unique furniture items and lighting features for specific architectural projects, as well as ceramic and leather objects and bags.
In architecture she selects materials that age in harmony and record the traces of time with dignity. This is a core characteristic of leather when maintained with love and care. Leather becomes the witness of our memories, aging with dignity.
Leather L+X
In her design ‘L+X Bag’, the surface is folded and made of leather, a material that improves with time, recording traces of life. It is sewn at the opposite corner, creating an “L” shape and the main body of the bag. A cut in an “X” shape creates the handle. The aim is to avoid any additional decorative elements. The bag is created using the minimum materials and gestures.
Her Italian origin brought her into contact with fine Italian leather. She still remembers the unique smell of leather she discovered from very early on in her life during her trips to Italy. Her experience in working with leather allows her to immediately see small quality differences while selecting the right material for her collections.
The central idea for the chess sets’ design starts with the base itself, with its classic motif of alternating surfaces in two colors. The repetition–accumulation of these two-dimensional shapes creates the pieces, by transforming surface into volume.
In its three-dimensional form, the square becomes a cube.
Real beauty has to emerge from the concept itself.
Elena Vandelli faithful to a minimal design, avoids the use of decorative elements. Metallic pieces and external stitching are used not to adorn but as the basic connecting elements of the different parts incorporating a combination of materials into the structure of each object.
Knowing from her architectural practice that the architect, in order to realize the concept design in the most accurate way, has to be present during the construction process supervising all the phases till the completion of the project, she implements this principle in her designs' manufacture. She loves to collaborate with the craftsmen working on her designs.
Obsessed with quality and detail she supervises all the production procedure. She is very lucky to have found excellent craftsmen that work on both her leather collection and her canvas collection.
