As befits someone who has co-written a book entitled How to Live With Objects, editor and creative consultant Monica Khemsurov is particularly picky about the stuff that surrounds her. Her passion for design and excellent eye for detail, which led her to co-found online design magazine Sight Unseen in 2009, has now been channelled into a new venture, Petra, an online collection of artistic hardware by leading designers that is making its debut during New York Design Week 2024.
Monica Khemsurov’s new hardware brand Petra
Currently living between Los Angeles and New York, Khemsurov has always been fascinated by the striking hardware she’s seen on her travels, including ‘the bold, sculptural handcrafted glass and metal door handles adorning art deco and modernist buildings in places such as Belgium, Italy, Portugal or Scandinavia’.
Now she aims to revive that tradition of attention to architectural detail and artistry with her new project, which has just launched at New York Design Week. Spanning cabinet knobs, drawer pulls, door handles, switch plates, appliance handles, curtain tiebacks, towel bars, and more, Petra features both existing boutique hardware lines as well as exclusive, newly commissioned works by independent designers.
Its beautifully curated debut collection of handmade fixtures was designed by 35 different contributors, including Turkish artist Zeynep Boyan; Brooklyn furniture makers Fort Standard; Tokyo-based Canadian industrial designer Maha Alavi; Californian architect Rachel Shillander; Viennese glass design specialists Ursula Futura; London-based designer Lewis Kemmenoe; and cutting-edge Mexican studio Panorammma.
Among its statement pieces are an exclusive series of metal pulls in the form of snakes, stones, and leaves created for Petra by Brooklyn and Medellín-based furniture designer Chris Wolston; and a series of cabinet knobs shaped like eyes, pomegranates and urns by NYC jewellery designer Pamela Love (her debut hardware offering).
Petra will also represent BD Barcelona’s licensed reproductions of Salvador Dalí’s elaborate 1937 ‘Rinoceróntico’ door handle (a collaboration between the surrealist artist and Jean-Michel Frank), as well as several knobs and handles designed by Antoni Gaudí for his Casa Milà, Calvet, and Batlló. The latter were created by Gaudí by squeezing or piercing clay with his hands, which was then cast in brass with a polished finish.
The brand’s debut takes place at the Soho showroom of lighting studio Blue Green Works, whose founder Peter B Staples has contributed a delicate chain-link cabinet pull to Petra’s initial offering. At the moment the collection is only available to purchase online.
The debut of Petra can be viewed on 16-17 May, as part of New York Design Week 2024
Blue Green Works
25 E Broadway, Floor 2
