Bio: Fernando is an artist and designer who spent his formative years in Mexico and Argentina, where he was inspired by the beautiful, panoramic vistas of Monterrey and Buenos Aires. Today, he runs Fernando Mastrangelo Studio, which works across the fields of architecture, interiors, furniture, and fine art. He’s known for creating visually arresting sculptural furniture by casting common materials, like sand and cement, into pieces that elegantly mimic scenes from nature.
A trolley from Montblanc's #MY4810 collection.…
Latest project: Customizing a piece of luggage from Montblanc’s first full travel collection, the #MY4810 series, in partnership with the German luxury brand. The collection has sentimental value for him, too: Fernando recently took his own #MY4810 to Los Angeles, for the premiere of the film The Predator, which stars his longtime friend and collaborator Boyd Holbrook.
A piece from Fernando's Ridge collection.…
Inspiration: “I wanted this to look like a part of my Ridge collection (of landscape-inspired decor). When you’re sitting at sunset, there’s this layering of mountain ridges—it’s nature’s natural gradient. I wanted to capture the flatness of that, in the way that a Japanese-style watercolor flattens space. It’s graphic enough to look like abstract, but it’s about travel and mountains, which ties together really nicely.”
Fernando uses tape and paint to create his signature color gradient.…
The Process
The Process
The Process
The Process
The Process
Process: “It’s similar to when I make a piece of furniture in that we blindly pack sand down into a mold to create a gradient. With the suitcase, as we’re layering the color, we’re doing it blindly until the final reveal. It’s this idea of working from the bottom to the top.”
The final product.…
The result: A satisfyingly bold travel accessory that’s as aesthetically serene as the landscapes that inspired it.
This story was conceived, produced, and edited by Surface Studios, the creative agency of Surface Media.
