Hailing from Penafiel, Portugal, AYLE is a new lifestyle brand founded by award-winning architect Pedro Miguel Santos and his partner, engineer Patrícia Correia. With a shared interest in art and design, they found difficulty in finding timeless, elegant and affordable furniture for their own house, and consequently began creating unique pieces that they themselves love. Launching with their first line of furniture, I was taken aback by the beauty of these pieces and I'm very happy to share them with you today.
AYLE uses small, artisanal and pre-existing infrastructures of production in the Portuguese region of Vale do Sousa to produce its furniture line, allowing these local producers to be introduced to the global market. From these close relationships and from the ancestral experience of the producers, AYLE's furniture obtained a high degree of attention to detail, durability and character.
“There is tremendous but dormant potential in these small workshops in Vale do Sousa. We see AYLE as a bridge of this small industry to the global market.”
AYLE's debut line was designed by Pedro Miguel Santos, and consists of a chaise lounge, bar stool, desk and two coffee tables. Rather than following any trends, the designs are centred around timelessness. To attain this goal, each piece is designed not as a mere sum of parts, but as a logical structural and volumetric system. A strong idea that seeks to explore the finest characteristics of carefully-chosen materials, every piece reveals itself as a whole; well thought-out, discreet but graceful.
The 1.02 and 1.03 Coffee Tables have a minimal connection between the elegant, solid wood legs and the heavy marble tabletop. In turn, the lightweight leather bottom shelf, ideal for storing books and magazines, completely surrounds its connection to the wooden structure. Both available in white and green marble, I love this beautiful combination of natural materials.
AYLE's 1.01 Desk has a clever storage compartment in the tabletop centre, through which electronic cables may be routed. The solid wood structure is partially embedded and exposed at the tabletop, allowing it to be freed from horizontal elements at its base, making the design light, elegant and practical.
The centrepiece of the debut line is the incredible Chaise Lounge 2.01, an anthropomorphic, solid wood structure that supports a thin leather seat with a comfortable and elegant curvature. Such an exquisite shape!
Also in the seating category, the 2.02 Bar Stool displays side by side longitudinal and transverse cuttings of wood with chromatic and texture differences. I really love how the collection highlights the characteristics that mark the beauty of natural materials.
Photography by Patrícia Correia
AYLE's debut collection is available throughout Europe at its www.ayle.co online store and other European online retailers.