2004 Homes & Garden Dec Cote Ouest Dec Residence (Dutch) Dec Living Etc Nov German TV Deutchweller Nov Instyle (Germany) Nov Selvedge Nov Story Japan Elle Deco (Germany) Oct Evening Standard Oct Window Fashions (UK) Oct Gagu (Korea) Oct O Magazine (Oprah Winfrey) USA Oct Sunday Times Sept Tatler Sept Harpers & Queen Sept Traditional Homes (USA) Oct ID July Elle Deco (profile) Aug Maison Francais July World of Interiors July Salon (Russia)May Elle (Swedan) May Elle Deco France April Living (Japan) April Cote au Est (France) April BBC Homes & Antiques April Elle Decoration March FT Feb7 th Feb The Times Jan Financial Times (USA) Jan 2001 Perfect Home Magazine - June Saturday Telegraph - June Harpers & Queen Audrey (Italy & France) BBC Good Homes BBC Home Front (TV) Tank Le Figaro (FRANCE) Living etc 2003 Paris Match Nov The Telegraph Sept (4 page feature on Gargantua/ worlds largest) New York Times (USA) Oct Window Fashion (USA) Oct Bridge Magazine Sept English Home Sept Living etc Nov Fabric Magazine May Interior May The London Magazine April German Vogue NEW YORK TIMES March Architectural Digest April ID magazine March Ideal Home Feb Elle Decoration Jan Architectural Digest Jan 2002 Architectural Digest (GERMANY) - DEC IDFX - DEC Financial Times - NOV World Of Interiors - OCT Sunday Times - OCT Evening Standard Main Feature - SEPT Evening Standard Main Feature - AUG Architectural Digest (GERMANY) - Feb Vogue (GERMANY) - OCT House & Garden - 0CT Elle Decoration - May & Aug 2001 (cont..) FFI (USA) Window Style (USA) Interior Decorator (USA) Country Living ID Evening Standard Ideal Home Vivid Marie - Fox Linton Book 'Window Style' House & Leisure (S.Africa) SUNDAY TIMES: ' STYLE' Magazine. Aug 28th 2005 'ALL THE TRIMMINGS' Mary Weaver reports ( a portion reproduced ) The design duo who have brought passementerie back into fashion have made it the prime feature..and is reflected in ...[their showroom].....adding glamour to every corner. ...For the past five years ...[Joe Zito and Robbie Spina] ...have been busy creating bespoke 'jewellery for the home' - feather tiebacks, crystal curtains, light sculptures and footstools, lusted after by everyone form Madonna to the house of Chrsistian Dior. The pair's work reviving the ancient art of passementerie- decoration using fringing, trimming and braiding......[From their showroom you can see] ...Crystal chandeliers..twinkle from cielings; jewel and feather-trimmed cushions adorn couches; plush footstools drip with beading and silk fringing. Blending in with these opulent items are quirky pieces picked up in unusual places: a cheyenne headress from Arizona, a Tibetan wedding cape...an antique metal rocking horse picked up from Scottish gypsies...... The company takes its name from Spina, from Robbie, a Lamda trained actor: it came about by chance when between acting jobs, he assisted an interiors editor on location.''There were masses of beautiful feathers on shoot and I was inspired to make them into tassels for curtain tiebacks,'' he says. His first tassels combining feathers and silk beading were snapped up by the deisgners Kelly Hoppen, Nicky Haslam and David Collins , and promptly ordered by Harrods and Liberty. Soon after Zito, a barrister turned painter, was roped in.''I feel more fulfilled nowadays,'' he says, adding that their joint creative output is greater than the sum of their individual talents. The award winning company which now employs a team of eight in its West London studio, has received commissions to work on prestigious decorating schemes, including the Hotel de Crillon, in Paris. It has also collaborated with Swarovski, Wedgwood and Harrods, where it regularly creates decadent window displays. 'MINIMALISM WITH BELLS ON' August 2002 feature Evening Standard -------------------------------------------- In the eyes of Robbie Spina & Joe Zito the duo behind the deluxe passementerie company Spina, the world would be a bleaker place without frivoulous tie-backs and froufrou tassels.'Tassels have moved on from the plain department store choices,'asserts Joe. Fortunatly, there are others who agree, not least Madonna, whose Marble Arch home is adorned with Spina's hand-made, exquisitely detailed, black & green tassels as light pulls, while her sofa sports an extravagant silk bullion fringe. Spina's unashamedly bijou confections drip with goose or guinea-fowl feathers, Japanese silk, mohair, suede, satin ribbons and Swarovski crystals. Colours range from subtle toffee brown, lilac and coral to dazzling kingfisher blue. Given that arid minimalism still has a huge influence on interiors, the Spina enterprise might have proved a dicey gamble, but it has thrived since it was set up two years ago. ....Nicky Haslam and Kelly Hoppen love them..and commissioned some as Christmas decorations....Spina's ritzy fipperies are now available at Mulberry, Harrods and the General Trading Company. Robbie Spina & Joe Zito lovingly handcraft what you would call haute couture homeware in their equally theatrical West Hampstead studio..... Eclectic and exotic is the only way to describe..Spina..there's an Asyrian amphora out of which spill out the mother and father of all tassels: two gargantuan maroon creations encrusted with semi-precious gems. ..Joe and Robbie travel the world to source the best silk threads( to compare their strength and luminosity')..Joe is also a painter and two splashy abstracts in the studio are in stark contrast to its classical antiquities....futuristic chandeliers produced in conjunction with Joe Boyd, a designer who works with crystals. It's Robbie and Joe's patience and love of detail that takes the breath away:it took two to three weeks to make just one of the intricate tassels in the hallway.But it would be wrong to suppose that these two peddle a baroque aesthertic for its own sake.Surprisingly, perhaps they believe in opulence counter-balanced by restraint. In other words theirs is a measured maximalism.If in the past tassels and tiebacks festooned busy, pattered curtains,now-according to Robbie and Joe- people prefer to give plain fabrics and furniture a decorative accent to lift them a touch. 'ALL THE TRIMMINGS... it's feathers with everything in the elegant studio of a design duo,' says Victoria O'Brian Sunday Times Style Magazine 26th May 2002 ------------------------------------------- 'Feathered tassels seem to be everywhere as you enter the Spina studio- as curtain tiebacks or blind pulls, on door handles, over sofas and chairs, on an antique Ottoman card table. Robbie Spina And Joe Zito jointly own and run the company that provides the interior-design equivalent to what an haute couture milliner such as Philip Tracy produces for the catwalk: fabulous feathered accessories chosen by top interior designers, from Madonna's favorite designer David Collins, to Kelly Hoppen and Nicky Haslam, to finish off their rooms. Spina also produces an exclusive range of key tassels for Mulberry and bronze silk tassels for the latest boutiques in Madison Avenue in New York. Recently, a couple flew in from Monaco to choose bespoke Spina tassels for their chateau. ''I'm really a frustrated fashion designer,'' says Spina who worked as a model, then a stylist, before turning to design. ''Feathers aren't all that practical to wear, but can be incredibly glamourous in interiors.'' Zito, who exhibits as a painter but trained as a barrister, runs the business. Hours of labour go into making each pieceby hand, and many of the workers learnt their craft in the now defunct hat factories of north London. The company is based in Spina and Zito's elegant high-ceilinged mansion flat which serves both as studio and showroom. It dates from the turn of the century and is a grand statement of glamour: parquet flooring throughout, a 1930's dining table and chairs topped with drop-crystal chandeliers ( also designed by the company) and a grand piano. ......Spina's studio is full of fantasy trimmings,'fur' and sparling playthings.Over the past few seasons, John Galliano and others have sent models down the catwalk in feather -trimmed everything, but here you can touch the sensuous stuff.''What we do narrows the gap between high fashion and interiors,'' says Spina.He describes each particular feather type used, from purplish or turquoise edged pheasant to polka-dot guinea-fowl, striped French partridge or bronzed exotics. In addition there is a rainbow array of Japanese and Moroccan silk threads ( wound by hand around clay to make-up the moulded tassel bobbins), along with mohair, suede, Swarovski crystal beads, raw linen, chenille, double-satin ribbon, 'fox'-fur pompoms and even 'mink' trimmings. ''In many ways, feathers are such weird old -fashioned objects,'' says Zito, ''but we've turned around something that might have been seen as frumpy and added sparkle to it.'' Prices range from £25 for a key tassel to £3,000 for the '' Moulin Rouge'' of tiebacks--giant showgirl type tassels that could easily work as a sculpture. ''They are the Jimmy Choo of interiors.'' confirms Spina. ''After all, people don't bat an eyelid paying the same amount for a pair of shoes, and the workmanship that goes into our tassels is just as detailed and painstaking.''