The Afterlife of Materials

In Retrouvius: Contemporary Salvage, Maria Speake, founder of the London-based studio Retrouvius, invites readers into a world where salvage and reuse become artful, multilayered design. With a foreword by Helena Bonham Carter and contributions from co-founder Adam Hills, Emma Crichton-Miller, Bella Freud and Mary Miers, the book is an absolute delight. Multilayered, textured and rich with character, the materials Speake and Hills assemble are not merely reused, they are reawakened. The studio celebrates patina, imperfection and the accumulated beauty of time. It feels less like conventional design and more like a thoughtful act of re-composition. Hills’ eye is attuned to discovery: windows from Battersea Power Station; oak pilasters from grand buildings; sea-defence timber weathered by England’s southern coast; and vintage wooden cigar moulds. Speake’s genius lies in bringing these fragments together, restoring coherence without erasing history. In one of their projects, cheese-maturing boards line a games room, the aforementioned cigar molds form kitchen joinery, and a copper hen-house roof becomes a washstand. The result is ambitious reclamation, where scars are not disguised but rendered quietly sublime.

This book offers a thoughtful entry into the world of Retrouvius, presenting their defining projects through photography and reflective text. The spaces revealed are expressive, shaped for contemporary living, and yet quietly timeless, lived-in, and full of character.

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