Chicago’s own- Refractory

Last year, in the midst of a global pandemic, Angie West and Alberto Velez launched Refractory, an America design brand that offers furniture, lighting, and design objects. At Suzanne Lovell Inc., we are especially enamored with Refractory because it is a Chicago-based company.

Both West and Velez previously worked at Holly Hunt and are art and design industry veterans. As the story goes, while the pair was working at and for Holly Hunt, they designed a small drink table with the help of a local bronze foundry. There was a rumor that the small shop would soon be closing its doors; so the decision was made to purchase and reinvent it.

It took only ten months for the idea behind Refractory to come full circle. When the foundry was purchased, the shop only had two employees; just a few months later, there are now forty employees working at the studio. The fated pair first met in 2010 when West left Holly Hunt to purchase what would become Refractory’s sister company, West Supply. Around the same time, Velez arrived in Chicago to take over the design reins at Holly Hunt; the two worked together periodically.

Over eleven years, West established what would become a nationally-known design and art fabrication business. She currently employs forty-five exceptional fabricators, artisans, strategists, and designers. Over this period, the company has cast and fabricated over one million pounds of bronze and 200,000 pounds of glass.

When Velez was tasked with creating a new bronze collection for Holly Hunt, the pair found themselves working together again. When soon thereafter Velez became available, the duo decided to join forces in what became Refractory.

Inspiration comes from nature, as well as (courtesy of Luxe Source), “the durability of the frontier and creatures that have survived for millennia.” It is the mysterious forces of nature and evolution, along with the work of talented artisans that produce the items coming out of the design studio.

Due to the nature of the material, each work is one-of-a-kind thanks to chemical interactions, heat, and a free hand. Variations and imperfections only add to the beauty and uniqueness of each piece. These slight differences also provide a code for identification purposes and for authentication and provenance intentions.

The key materials of the studio’s debut collection include cast bronze, white oak, cast resin, cast glass, and solid black wood. Paying homage to the studio’s philosophy are the collections’ names such as the “Scimitar bench”: named after “‘the hard-worn artifacts of the frontier,” with a time-worn patina and the bronze and kiln-cast glass “Isthmus” hanging light named after a narrow piece of land connecting two larger areas across a body of water.”

The importance of color theory was at the foundation of the company’s ethos. Initially, the team began to collect minerals, travertines, different colors of horse hair, and aged metal patinas. The wide range of these pigments, tones, and textures became the segue into the full collection of offerings.

Refractory does work for design clients such as Anna Karlin and Holly Hunt; in addition, they also provide fine art and architectural fabrication services for large-scale commissions. Perhaps our favorite thing about the studio is that it is committed to teaching and employing Chicago-based artisans to create; but also to “enhance the livelihoods of master craftspeople.”