SEAT OF POWER:
studiorusso x duck head green

SEAT OF POWER: studiorusso x duck head green

 

Seat of Power was designed as part of the “Plants, Potions and Power” exhibition with The Story Box Collective at Ham House (National Trust), then on display at London Design Festival 2026.

 

Responding to the collection at Ham House, Seat of Power built on a year long research project diving into the overlaps between 17th century marquetry, plant medicine, and political power.

 

A contemporary throne grounded in 17th‑century opulence, Seat of Power reimagines Dutch marquetry as a living language of plants and colonialism. Blending AI-generated design with traditional craft, the work explores how botanical symbolism can be revived to interrogate legacies of colonial expansion, plant medicine, and societal control.

 

The marquetry features poppy, coca, hemp, and the Tudor rose—plants deeply entangled in histories of healing and domination. Once revered in sacred and plant medicine traditions, these species were seized and transformed by empire: turned into opiates, narcotics, and fibers of industry. Poppy and coca became the engines of global trade and prohibition alike; hemp, essential to naval conquest, became a political scapegoat; the Tudor rose symbolized dynastic myth and national identity.

 

Seat of Power evokes the uneasy balance between symbolism and subjugation, wealth and exploitation. The chair becomes both a vessel and a warning—exposing how empire drew power from the plants it commodified, and reminding us how beauty, pharmacology, and control have long been intertwined.

 

Designed by Leo Russo @studio_russo_design

And Milo Tonry Brown @duck_head_green