Brands with a reputation for innovation, reinvention and creativity make a habit of constantly seeking out new ways to use the product or service that first gave them life. These brands hunt down new ways to incorporate their chief product or service into current trends and market needs, keeping it relevant and helping to drive innovation and competition in their respective markets.
Tratto, a newly introduced leather architectural screening system by Spinneybeck, is a smart, fresh innovation from the storied leather company.
Tratto, meaning traction or stretch in Italian, is stretched CNC cut belting leather held in traction within an aluminum frame with a clear satin anodized finish. Its aesthetic is sophisticated yet playful, lending a polished quality to space divider options, of which many on the market can give a cobbled-together, less than desirable appearance.
Tratto’s designer, architect Emanuela Frattini Magnusson, was inspired by belting leather’s durability, and how the leather could be sliced and stretched to create sculptural shapes. First developed during the Industrial Revolution to drive machinery, belting leather’s thickness and rigidity has since found new design applications, including furniture strapping, table inlays and wall tiles. But, Tratto takes the material’s design potential to a new level.
“At Spinneybeck we have a history of excellence with leather,” said Traci Roloff, Spinneybeck Vice President of Marketing and Communications. “We’re very focused now on coming up with more innovative uses for leather. Belting leather is used a lot for wall tiles, but when you cut it like that, you can create some amazing patterns that make a big aesthetic impact.”
Ms. Magnusson found that its thickness provided a tensile strength that would be perfect for a decorative screen design.
“After seeing a piece of the cult belting leather, I was intrigued by what could happen when adjusting the location of the cut and how it could be stretched,” said Ms. Magnusson. “It reminded me of an old paper-cutting game that children used to play, where, after cutting it, the paper unwound to form a chain link.”
While Tratto offers no acoustical function, the product’s aesthetic qualities make it a luxurious alternative to the typical space divider options. Its design capitalizes on the play of positive and negative space, affording space separation without blocking light or sight lines.
Because of the nature of the material, Tratto has a very distinctive front, which would be in a chosen color, and back, which retains the natural backing of leather. This gives the designer a window of creativity in choosing an arrangement of the screens.
A tiny cherry on top is the product’s material efficiency; its design stretches the leather to more than twice its length.
Appropriate for contract, hospitality and residential environments, Tratto is available in several standard widths and heights, from 2’x4’ up to 3’x6’, moving in 4-inch increments. The screens can be linked together to deliver large-scale applications and are available in 26 colors of belting leather. The frames install to floor and ceiling surfaces with suspension hardware and suspension cabling that may be cut to length to accommodate varying existing conditions.
Spinneybeck, along with German-milled Wool Design Felt company FilzFelt (acquired by Knoll in 2011) have both been busy developing new products. FilzFelt has focused on applying its materials to acoustic solutions, and Spinneybeck plans to follow suit, along the lines of modular wall panel systems with acoustic function.
“We’re also exploring new substrates, focusing on more natural materials, because that’s what we specialize in,” said Ms. Roloff.
The renewed focus on leather architectural products is part of a larger corporate rebranding that also includes a newly redesigned website. For more information on the rebranding, visit www.spinneybeck.com.
We’re happy to stay tuned!