Zachary Frankel is an artist and designer born and based in Melbourne who, in recent years, has played a significant part in grounding Melbourne as a design haven for Australia. With an educational background in jewellery and silversmithing, Zachary brings a romantic and exacting eye to his work across furniture, lighting and sculpture.
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It is no secret that a certain symbiosis is integral to the success of design and designers in Australia. Makers need draftsmen, who need fabricators, who need photographers. Craftspeople are pressed up against architects and gallerists. Each requires the other and leans in, in tandem. As a project – a house, a public building, an exhibition or a design fair – progresses and finds its rhythm, the mass of creatives connected to it expands and contracts. Zachary’s practice has grown steadily in this ecosystem, and his national notability has flourished from a place of unabashed authenticity. When I ask him about his intention for making, he says, “I generally follow whichever path I’m taken down and see where it leads. More than a decade ago, I would think about how this piece or that product would fit into the market. I constantly came to the same conclusion: that the ideas were generic and soulless. It was only when I started making things – often objects without a use, like sculpture – that I realised I had anything authentic to offer. Sometimes it’s easy, sometimes it takes time and patience, but I’m usually happy with the result. I just have to trust.”
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In Hotel House, Zachary’s studio and showroom in North Fitzroy, his aesthetic sensibility acts as a generous draping to all corners of the building. You know immediately that an object has been found or made by him in the way that you know when a song belongs to a particular era. The Old New Cabinet, a Tasmanian blackwood piece with a hand-carved linenfold motif made for Melbourne Design Week in 2024, sits comfortably alongside the Floor Lamp Big with Flute Side Tables dotted around the room like freckles, reminding me that cohesion is easy when authenticity sits at the fore of your values system as a maker.
In early 2026, Zachary delivered Tableau Vivant, recreating a warm, domestic space within the industrial backdrop of Future Objekt – the inaugural design salon at the Melbourne Art Fair. I had the pleasure of visiting Hotel House in the weeks preceding the fair, so I was able to see the Bean Desk up close before it made its way to the exhibition. The desk’s curved form embraces the body, and is marked by the same care and resilience that is apparent of Zachary’s broader body of work.
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There is something to be said about a maker who can shift nimbly from commercial product to artistic pursuit – in Zachary’s case, to realise custom fitouts for clients such as Viktoria and Woods, and, in the same production cycle, ideate a hand-carved chair to honour and reference personal histories. During the Melbourne Art Fair, Zachary softly launched Verra to the public as part of his offering. Inspired by Achille Castiglioni, Vico Magistretti and Gaetano Pesce – visionaries who, unconstrained by a single practice, conjured design worlds characterised by elegance, utility and play – Verra is a hardware studio whose founding desire is to create future heirlooms for homes. The sand-cast bronze handles and knobs celebrate tactility – like jewellery for the home, bringing his practice full circle.