Silver Set 2025 by Rachel Whiteread

Rachel Whiteread

Silver Set 2025
6-piece edition
in sterling silver

To create the “drinking set” Silver Set 2025, British artist Rachel Whiteread started with an ordinary piece of corrugated cardboard packaging, which she folded and rolled to create a pitcher, cups, a tray, and napkin rings, transforming the material by reversing its function. "The plasticity and flexibility of cardboard seemed the opposite of the solidity of sterling silver. What could emerge from this opposition was therefore interesting."

Silver Set 2025
By Rachel Whiteread

Rachel Whiteread lives and works in London. She studied sculpture at the Slade School of Art in London. In 1993, at the age of 30, she became the first woman to receive the prestigious Turner Prize, and since then, her memorable sculptures, generally minimalist and cast in plaster based on domestic objects and environments, have been exhibited worldwide. For her collaboration with Puiforcat, Rachel wanted objects that could be both decorative and functional. Once the pieces were defined, the artist supervised the entire manufacturing process with the workshop's artisans.

To faithfully convey the history of this collection, the Puiforcat workshop ingeniously deployed its exceptional expertise. The artisans combined modern technologies, such as CNC milling, to meticulously remove the corrugated pattern from the cardboard from which the models were born, chisel out certain deformations, and add the traces of human life desired by the artist.
« It was a great pleasure to be able to follow the whole process and collaborate with a company that understands how an artist works and knows that every detail is important to reflect their thoughts.”

« These are common forms that have been in human usage for centuries and are a part of our material culture. Imperfections provide some memory of that. It was also important that the objects had the touch of my hand and didn’t look too mechanical. » Rachel Whiteread

The creation of the collection SILVER SET 2025 was entrusted to British artist Rachel Whiteread, winner of the prestigious Turner Prize. The visual rhetoric of this sculptor, printmaker, and designer focuses on the history of the original object through what it is not—its emptiness—to transform it into a fullness, explore its memory, and give presence to its absence. Her eclectic sculptures thus become imprints, solidified metaphorical transpositions of air, using a wide range of materials: plaster, concrete, resin, rubber, cardboard, and metal.