Per Zennström

“In physics, objects are either in motion or at rest. And objects at rest are objects capable of being in motion. Objects are always waiting, if you will, waiting to become something other than that which they currently are. The geometry of photography is a lot like physics. Things have either taken a shape or are about to take a shape. Photography is about being able to predict when shapes are born – or creating them yourself.”

-Per Zennstrom for Hasselblad Masters.

The  Swedish world-renowned high fashion and advertising photographer, writer and fan of Lost City’s products  has impressed us and captured our attention for a long time.

Zennstrom started his  professional photography journey at the University of Gothenburg, only to drop out after two years to get a head start on what would become one of the most impressive portfolios in the industry.

Zennstrom cover

With top clients such as Dior, Guy Laroche, Absolute Vodka, Nina Ricci and more, Per has worked in all fashion capitals of the world. He is now settled in Berlin he is creating images with his signature edginess and impressively high quality.

Per’s ritual of photographing starts with an idea and a gut feeling that the idea will transcend into a powerful image. Just like most brilliant artists, Per relies on his vivid mind. “I sometimes have all the images “ready and already shot” in my head. Then “all” you have to do is just getting it on film. Other times you just dive right into the unknown…”

As a fan of Lost City, Per has  featured our Forensic line not once but twice in both his own blog and as a contributing writer for Feld Hommes Magazine.

We are very pleased with the esthetics of this  presentation and how Per manages to capture the essence  of Lost City’s products.

To see more of Zennstrom’s impressive and multifaceted portfolio. Visit perzennstrom.com.

Magasin Totale

Lost City is proud to be represented by Magasin Totale.

This highly reputable showroom located in the neighborhood of Dumbo, Brooklyn opened in March of 2009 and already has an impressive repertoire of designers.

Under the direction of Michelle Casciolo, the showroom is highly selective and only represents the most innovative and talented designers and artists working today. The focus is on working collaboratively to place handcrafted work made by true artisans in the appropriate shops, galleries and venues.

Magazine Totale is hosting Afshan Durrani from Lost city in The Art of Hand Embroidery. It’s curated by Michelle Casciolo and will take place at the showroom.  The exhibition will be an extraordinary event where guests can view the exquisite products hand embroidered  by Lost City artisans.

Exhibition Detail:
Magasin Totale hosts Afshan Durrani from Lost City: The Art of Hand Embroidery
Magasin Totale
10 Jay Street
Suite 724
Brooklyn, NY 11201
February 4th – March 1st
Opening: February 4th 6:00 PM – 9:00 PM

Joel – Peter Witkin

“My work would have the impact of my unreality – my doubts.
I wanted my photographs to be as powerful as the last thing a person sees or remembers before death.”

- Joel-Peter Witkin

Lost City is a huge fan of the photographer extraordinaire, Joel – Peter Witkin.

Born in Brooklyn, 1939, he discovered early that he had an interest in matters that  were considered taboo. He decided that he wanted to capture these things on camera and he developed a way of catching human conditions on his lens that is powerful, disturbing and most of all beautiful.

Joel- Peter Witkin

Witkins has a deep interest in the spiritual world and has devoted over twenty years to portraying how it impacts the physical world.One of his passions is finding beauty in what is grotesque and making art out of it. He researches his subjects by visiting medical schools, morgues and insane asylums all over the world.

Le Baisier (New Mexico),1982

He sketches his idea on paper and then brings it to life by photographing out of the ordinary humans such as dwarfs, hermaphrodites, amputees, androgynies, people with extraordinary body conditions and he is a specialist at capturing humans who “bears the wounds of Christ”.

Anti Christ

To us he is more than a photographer. He is an Art Historian due to his constant referencing to artists such as Picasso, Balthus, Goya, Velasquez and Miro.

Lost City loves his passion for what has been lost. His work is modern with homage to history. His work and mind frame inspired Lost City to make our Forensic line of pillows.

We love the idea of making something lost, grotesque and taboo turn into something beautiful.

Hand embroidered Blood on Pillow

Khwaja Mir Dard

My friend, we’ve seen enough fine sights,
through which we loved to roam.
You stay on to enjoy them;
we are ready to go home.

-Translated Dard poem

Khawaja Mir Dard, the mystic 18^th Century Urdu poet, has inspired Lost City to feature poems in his native language on our artisan made products.

Dard was everything Lost City loves; mysterious, self-driven, and he wrote poems about human and earthly love and he has been raved as one of the three pillars of Urdu ghazal.

His father Khwaja Mohd Nazir Andlib, who was a saint and a poet home- schooled Dard. It was from him that Dard inherited his deep passion for music, art, and poetry.

Dard’s style of writing is simple, natural and musical, resulting in thought provoking and powerful poetry.

Lost City pays tribute to his greatness by featuring his hand-embroidered love poems on silk scarf.

Dard Love Poem on Scarf

Princess Shokushi

There’s still snow

Yet spring is here

The warbler’s

Frozen tears

May be melting even now.

- A poem on the beginning of spring by Princess Shokushi.

We celebrate the New Year by paying a tribute to the Honkadôri (allusive variation technique) love poet, Princess Shokushi.

She was an Emperor’s daughter, Shrine Priestess at Kamo, and outstanding love poet of 12^th Century Japan.

Shokushi was a revolutionary woman of the medieval times, authoring poems of passion and never getting married. She devoted her life to writing poems and serving the Kamo Shrine. At the end of her life she found Buddhism and devoted the rest of her life to the religion as a nun. Her poems reflect her Buddhist respect for all living things, especially nature.

She became inspired by nature and saw it as her personal mentor. Her poetry preserves an environmental insight and Shokushi produced over 50 poems in honor of the four seasons.

Shokushi’s lustful collection of spring poems became the inspiration of Lost City’s line of spring pillows, featuring hand-embroidered versions of her translated poems on raw cotton.

The collection is a celebration of spring, and we can think of no better way to welcome the New Year.

We wish you all a very happy 2010.

Spring Poem on Pillow

An Ode To Sikander, A Lost City Hand-Embroidery Artist Extraordinaire

Sikander, one of the best hand-embroidery artisans employed by Lost City in Lucknow, India, died last month. He was only in his fifties and a family man to the core. He is survived by his wife and two sons.  Sikander was meticulous and always sharply dressed. He had intense eyes, but he said very little. It was his fingers that spoke, as they created magic with needle and thread. Over the past several years, he worked on sampling and production of some of our most intricate and poignant designs, including Kashmir, a lovely floral inspired by the troubled north Indian state.

The beautifully balanced color palate and the nuanced “aari” (hooked needle) work on this fabric is a testimony to his unparalleled mastery of hand-embroidery. Introduced to the trade two years ago, Kashmir is one of our favorite designs, and the photos we took during the sampling process feature Sikander, laboring away for hours, trying to get it just right. So compelling were the images of his eyes and hands that we decided to feature them in our brochure, and his well-worn fingers holding his favorite needle became a symbol of the Lost City brand and its values.

Sikander is on the far right

We salute Sikander, the debonair gent, family man and hand-embroidery artist extraordinaire. We will miss him very much. Although he never left India, Sikander’s work has traveled far and wide and will be admired in elegant homes of people he never knew, thousands of miles away.

"Kashmir"- Sikander's masterpiece is one of Lost City's proudest moments

The Allure of Unknown Women

Lost City is endlessly inspired by women, in all their myriad shapes and sizes and diversity- from the 10^th century Persian poetess Rabeha Balkhi, who inspired our much admired design RABEA, to the beautiful and mysterious Mumtaz Mahal, who is enshrined in the Taj Mahal, to the millions of ordinary women of the world who overcome extraordinary odds every day to make their mark.

In the summer of 2007, I was walking down the street in Berlin, very much a Lost City, when I came across a fascinating exhibition inside a corporate building. Black and white photographs of unknown women from 1850s to 1940s were juxtaposed with biographies of some of the more obscure but remarkable women who lived around the same time. At first it didn’t seem to make sense, but I later I got completely absorbed in it.

There was Elizabeth Clovis Lange (1784-1882), the initial Superior-General of the Oblate Sisters of Providence, first black Roman Catholic order to operate in the United States.  She was a towering figure in 19^th century educational circles around Baltimore, Maryland for over 50 years, and after her death, there were attempts to make her the first African-American female to be canonized by the Roman Catholic Church. Her resume was on the flip side of a formally posed photo of unknown Russian woman from 1909.

The mystical, cloak-clad image of an unknown woman from Samarkand is contrasted by the story of Annie Louise Barton (1958-1910), born a slave, the daughter of a cook and a white planter. Emancipated during the Civil War, Annie published her biography, Memories of Childhood’s Slavery Days in 1909 to great criticism.

The beautiful Jeanne Hebuterne (1989-1920) was a French artist who fell in love with, and became the principal muse of the famous painter Amedeo Modigliani.  Modigliani died of tuberculosis and substance abuse in 1920, and two days later Jeanne Hebuterne flung herself out of a fifth floor apartment killing herself and her unborn child.  Strangely, her tragic story is featured opposite the smiling portrait of an unknown Singaporean woman dated circa 1890-1923.

In all of these now forgotten women we see attributes that Lost City draws inspiration from- fearlessness, mystery, bravery in the face of opposition, passion and beauty. The stories are fascinating and often powerful, and the photographs evocative of bygone times that somehow seem more mystical and bucolic than the age we live in.

Lost City’s hand-embroideries seek to revive similar things: lost beauty, the vanishing traditions of love and grace, iconic artists, brave men and women who were ahead of their times, mad poets and inspired thinkers.

We hope you are as transported by this slideshow of unknown women as we are.

Afshan Durrani

Welcome to Lost City’s New Website and Online Store!

When we launched the company a few years ago, we had no idea of the adventure we were embarking upon. Our humble idea was to get the hand-embroidered work of artisans toiling away in forgotten cities in front of an audience that would appreciate its exquisite beauty and uniqueness. We started out by selling to the trade through quality showrooms like David Sutherland, Diane Bergeron and soon, architects like Peter Marino were using Lost City fabrics in distinguished projects like the Ty Warner Suite at The Four Seasons hotel and the Koch residence in New York, and the media and blogs began to take notice and feature our work.

It has been an arduous but intensely gratifying experience so far, and over the past two years we have launched four major fabric collections featuring over 50 styles inspired by diverse influences ranging from the Weiner Werstatte workshops in Vienna to Mughal architecture.

An Appreciative Audience for Beauty

We are very grateful to the editors, showrooms and designers who have so passionately fallen in love with our fabrics. Their support has directly benefited dozens of families of artisans in Lucknow,  India, and enabled them to continue and flourish in the dying art of hand-embroidery.  In particular, we would like to thank all the interior designers using our fabrics for their best projects and challenging us to exceed the boundaries of hand-embroidery techniques; Ann Sutherland from David Sutherland; Ariel Kaminer and Julie Iovine from the New York Times; and Jeralyn Gerba from Daily Candy for being champions and enabling the larger public to be exposed to the amazing beauty that can be created with hands, thread and fabric. Most of all though, we are indebted to the dozens of Lost City artisans who create the amazing products we are so proud to bring to the world.

The Lost City website, created in collaboration with Chemistry, has received its own share of accolades for being an appropriately adventurous online home for our products. There has been a lot of feedback from people who have stumbled upon it, clients, and fans of iconic design. Clients want to see our embroidery on products other than fabric-by-the-yard for the trade. There have been many requests from people to be able to buy Lost City items online. We are responding to all of these and introducing multiple new product lines and designs with the launch of this new website and online store.

Everything New and Exciting

New product lines, on sale for the very first time, include collections of hand-embroidered pillows, scarves, and one-of-a-kind chairs. The Lost City website’s new features include a media page where we can share our inspirations, a blog that will be frequently updated with the stories behind our products, and a new slide show and video player that features content created exclusively for us by video artists and musicians we like.

Our launch campaign features Turkish actress Betul Alganathy and French-American singer Maggie Kim. The soundtrack to our videos was provided by the Icelandic psychedelic-rock band Andrum. There will be a lot more exciting content added to the Lost City website in the coming weeks and months.

Lost City Products Are Now Available Here and Now!

What we are most excited about is the launch of our online store! We hope you will appreciate the toil and travel of a stubborn, battle-worn entrepreneur pursuing a beautiful dream, and the hours, days and weeks of work that goes into the creation a single Lost City Product. Our hand-embroidered pillow collection, for example, has taken months to conceive, and a single medieval design takes four days for two artisans to compete after which it is hand washed, finished, and hand sewn.

We hope you find the same joy in owning these products as we do in creating them, and share your Lost City adventure with others. Please remember to check out our Facebook page and sign-up for our Twitter feed.

See you again soon in Lost City

Afshan Durrani

New York City

Man On Wire

Last night some of the Lost City team went to see James Marsh’s documentary “Man on Wire”, a brilliant and exhilarating account of French tightrope walker Philippe Petit’s audacious walk across a wire stretched between the twin towers of the World Trade Towers in 1974. The film must rank as one of the greatest documentaries ever made- an homage to the bravest of brave guerrilla art. Petit had dreamt of walking between (what were then) the highest towers in the world even before they were fully erected. After six years of preparation, Petit and his intrepid team of corroborators pulled off a miraculous and poetic act of art which cannot be repeated. Watching the gifted (and obviously somewhat possessed) Petit step on the illegally rigged wire 1350 ft above the ground, and walk and dance in the sky for nearly an hour, above a spellbound crowd, is a life affirming experience.

After the screening, magically, the director, and Philippe Petit himself, appeared for a Q&A with the audience. In response to one of the questions, Petit said he believed that to live life is to be challenged, to go against the grain, push the limits, and do the impossible. At Lost City, we believe in Petit’s philosophy and wildly applaud his miraculous feat. Thank you for showing us we are not mad to dream of impossible things.

A Lost City employee stands next to his daredevil hero, Philippe Petit

The Trembling Delights Of Turkey

Turkey has been a source of inspiration for Lost City for the longest time. Its beautiful, open-hearted people, its secular culture, and its heady blend of ancient and new make it a country we return to again and again for inspiration- a sort of exhilarating Utopia- almost too good to be true. We decided to shoot our new silk line in the edgy exoticism of Istanbul and the surreal beauty of the mountains and caves of Cappadocia. We had a truly nourishing experience we will present to you in our future work.

The road to Urgup is pure rock and roll. A flag of Lost City silk flutters on a vagabond tree

A local lady from Urgup invited us to her home and was happy to model Lost City’s Tulip design.

The caves of Goreme have beautiful churches that date back to the 12th century. Our fabrics are inspired by their frescos.