Background

Allegra Hicks is an artist and designer who lives and works between London and Naples. Known for her eye for patterns, Allegra attributes her inspiration to the world around her, building from the colours and forms found in nature. Beginning her career in fresco painting, today Allegra continues to respect the fluidity of watercolour across a wide range of media, from tapestries to rugs to cast bronze and metal work. Over the past decades, Allegra’s work has flourished into one of design pieces which investigate the diaphanous bridge between art and design.

Signature style

Everything starts with a feeling, the need to express an idea borne from the combination of pure creative instinct and intellectual exploration. Allegra’s signature style is a visual representation of this idea. With artistic training in painting, Allegra’s work keeps the fluidity of a watercolour, regardless of the material. The rug becomes a floored canvas, with liquid shapes interweaving threads which bind together to make a wool-knotted whole. The same wool in crochet knits itself into something three dimensional this time. The knitted table is at once so different in form from the rug, which was its conception, and yet in its fundamentals, entirely the same. In this way, Allegra’s style is eclectic, tied together by one visual language, and translated into different forms. There is a sense of alchemy in the material exploration of this creative vocabulary. Indeed, Allegra’s more recent experimentations of metals show just this, as all at once her bronze pieces are fragile and feminine as fabric, but structural and rigid as metal. Inspired by natural elements, this fluid and eclectic harmony is what defines Allegra’s style. It is at heart as delicate and powerful as nature. 

Showstoppers

The Electra cast bronze rope banquette graced by the colourful embroidered fabric of its seat epitomizes Allegra’s poetic streak. The bronze structure is treated as though it were made of rope curling and dancing around a perfectly rectangular seat. The collection of cast bronze designs – mostly tables and table lights – is a tour de force of creativity and delicate craftsmanship.