You can be forgiven if your initial reaction to Uchronia’s fantastical, tassel-bedecked, extravagantly fringed Lilypad pedestal is bewilderment. Is it high Victoriana? An escapee from a half-forgotten fairy tale? A prop from a Yorgos Lanthimos movie?
In fact, the otherworldly Lilypad is a limited-edition plant stand designed by the Paris-based design collective and produced in collaboration with two venerable French companies: the silk house Prelle, which was founded in 1752 and today has showrooms in Paris, Lyon and New York; and Passementerie Verrier, an equally legendary maker of tassels, fringe, pompons, rosettes and all manner of trimmings.
The Lilypad, along with Uchronia’s scalloped Flower cushions, glittering Pompom stool and crescent-shaped Sunny armchair, all available on 1stDibs, is part of the studio’s recent Candy Box collection, intended to show off historic French craft traditions reimagined for the current era.
The luscious sunrise colors — pinks and mauves and yellows — are very much in keeping with Uchronia’s joyful ethos. Although the firm’s residential and commercial interiors lean 1960s or ’70s more often than Victorian or baroque, they unabashedly embrace an over-the-top technicolor palette. “We’re not afraid of anything that could be seen as kitsch or passé,” Uchronia’s founder, Julien Sebban, told Elle Decor, which gave the collective a coveted place on its A-List for 2024.
The Candy Box series is not Uchronia’s first outing with Prelle, for which it has created fabric designs based on seaweed, waves and floral sprays, as well. “We love flowers, waves, movement and visual trickery,” says Clémentine Bricard, a key member of Uchronia’s design team. Another aspect of their endless creativity, she says, is “giving new life to pieces we have hunted down.” The Lilypad began with such a vintage find. “It was an old wooden plant stand, totally worn by time. We fell in love with it and imagined a whole universe of colors to reveal and enhance it.”
“Candy Box” is also the title of Uchronia’s installation at Prelle’s East 10th Street showroom in New York, which has been deliciously transformed into a silk-swagged and -draped chamber furnished with pieces from the collection. The temporary exhibition is on site only for a season, which is fitting for a studio that takes its name from a genre of speculative fiction that plays with concepts of time and history. (The neologism uchronia is composed of the Greek word for time and prefix meaning no.) “We create places of experience,” Bricard says.
