Hey, everyone, welcome to my podcast.
Insights by Ben Siegel.
The name of the podcast was based on the idea
and notion that every episode will have one insight
or one nugget of knowledge after hearing from our guest.
I'm Ben Siegel, managing director of private
wealth at UBS Financial Services.
Our team, Connor Siegel Partners, is based in New York City, Miami and Boston.
After the podcast, I can be reached at Benjamin
Dot Seagull, ubs.com.
Today's special guest is the founder and chief creative officer of Glass Studios.
Alister Walker.
Alister, can you tell us a little bit about
Asprey Studios and how you got there?
Yeah, sure.
So Asprey studio is part of, Asprey.
And Asprey is a, a luxury brand based in England.
It's, founded in 1781.
So it's a it's an ancient brand.
And, the history of Asprey is long and deep
and high end luxury items, bespoke, products.
And throughout its history,
it’s had I think, over 200 royal warrants.
So that is serving lots of different royal families of, of luxury goods.
It's based in Mayfair and in London.
So it's very prestigious address.
And the in the store
they have homeware, jewelry,
you know, bridal, handbags, that kind of thing.
Asprey studio
is a completely different entity.
Asprey studio is more on the art side.
So we have an art gallery, in Mayfair,
and then we have a large,
ateliers workshop in Kent.
And the workshop in Kent has, 11 masters,
11 master silversmiths and goldsmiths.
We have sculptors, we have animators.
It's like a fusion of traditional and new skills in the digital world.
And that creates the products for the gallery.
And in the gallery we exhibit them.
We work with artists, contemporary artists,
and we also create our own collections.
So what kind of collections have you created since you started?
So the first one was was with Bugatti, the car company.
And the interesting thing
with Bugatti was, they were founded by artists.
So Rembrandt, Bugatti, Carlo Bugatti, the famous furniture maker.
Rembrandt Bugatti was a famous sculptor.
So Bugatti is actually an incredibly interesting company
because they have the roots of being artists.
So we created a collection.
It was actually a huge collection, 261 pieces, of,
a particular car called the La Voiture Noire.
And, we created them in silver.
They’re wall mounted,
and that came with a digital, art piece.
And each one was unique.
So it's incredibly hard to make this, but we sold out in about 20 minutes.
And that was the start of ready Asprey studio.
And so as we studios have some of the top silversmiths in the world.
we have the top, You have the top, we have the top.
It's, we have, a very big,
a large amount of masters compared to other workshops.
Right.
And, we're putting in a program, an apprentice program as well, at the moment.
And then we have a couple of people
that we train up as well who are now, incredibly talented.
But yeah, they are the best of the world.
So you did this Asprey collection in conjunction with Bugatti,
and then recently, you had one of your pieces, which is, I would say,
extremely difficult to get into the British Museum had that come about.
Yeah, so, the egg,
the Asprey Bugatti egg was the second one we did.
And then, the British Museum
came about through a mutual friend who, who knew a collector
that, collected the, Albert Dürer
rhinoceros print.
Albert Dürer,
was an artist in 1500s.
He was one of the masters of his time.
He was a young kid, actually.
He's probably about 23, 24 when he was kind of like,
you know, world, world recognized,
and he was super innovative.
So he was really pushing for, like, you know,
one of the first artists to do the self-portrait.
But one of the things that he was known for
was his wood block carving.
And he came up with the idea that I can make reproductions
of my own art
through wood block carving, and then you’d make prints.
So he was very innovative for his time.
One of the pieces
that he did was on a rhino.
So at the time in Europe, nobody had seen a rhino.
And so,
I think it was the king of Portugal, imported a rhino, basically.
And as the boat came into port, the boat sank with a rhino on it.
It was chained to the to the to the boat.
And someone wrote a description because there's someone on the
on the port that wrote the description of what it looked like.
That description went to Dürer.
From that description to your sketch,
what he thought it looked like based on,
his knowledge of anatomy, and his knowledge of art and so on.
So he then drew this, and then he made the wood block print out of his sketch.
And that became, I think, I think, I think he did about 200,000 copies.
I'm not sure if it's that much, but but it was a lot.
And that became the,
the picture that everyone in Europe thought a rhino looked like.
Right.
So it's a very important piece.
So you were able to make a reproduction out of silver?
I think it was 90 pieces put together.
And then you made ten that you sold to, I think clients.
And so one of the things I think Asprey Studios does is make these very,
very limited edition collections that have carried a lot of value.
Yeah.
Of quality materials.
Yeah.
Well, it's a big piece.
So that the rhino is is a large piece.
And, it's all out of sterling silver.
It's sterling silver and it's incredibly hard to do.
And we had to think about how do we do this and how do we
create it using
traditional techniques but with a bit of modern technology.
So we cut it up into 90 pieces
and each smith worked on a piece, so to speak.
And then they'll puck weld it.
Now there's only probably about 2 or 3 people in the UK
that can puck weld and join the silver pieces together.
And then when you when you puck weld it,
if you get the temperatures wrong, you burn out the silver.
So, this piece is
an extraordinary piece of contemporary silversmithing.
So, and that was revealed at the British Museum,
and one of them belongs to their archive now.
So, one of the things that I find very interesting that I think
people are interested in today is digital art and the crossroads
they use it with the productions that you make, the limited productions.
Can you go into a little bit more your view on digital art
and how you see it and how you interact it with what you guys do?
Yeah. So, going back to the Rhino.
So the rhino was the physical silver sculpture.
But as Dürer was a, was a pioneer in his time,
if he was alive today, he would definitely be using digital art
because you can replicate it quickly
to a mass audience.
So with this collection,
it comes with the inscription,
the digital art piece of Dürer’s drawing
from the archives of the British Museum,
because they actually have the original drawing.
So this is an incredible collection,
for people to have, because not only is it in the museum,
but you get Dürer’s original piece of digital art
on the blockchain linked to the physical.
So that's the first major museum to do it.
So in the future,
we're living in a world that's increasingly connected
and a lot of the younger audience, and now a lot of the, you know,
more mature audience,
they, are getting used to it.
And, you know, I can remember, like, you know, when the iPad and iPhone came out,
a lot of people thought,
oh, you know, there's no keyboard, you know, how is this going to work?
And now everyone is using them of every age
so that they are natively, digitally adopted.
Now, the thing with digital art
is that you can put codes to it,
and when you can put code to an image,
you can do incredible things that,
that you can't do with, you know, traditional medium because it's static
and using the blockchain that can verify the ownership of that piece of art.
So, you could, for example,
you could have, a sculptor that's an amazing coder.
And there are people like that now who can sculpt but also code,
who can create a digital art piece, that's on the wall.
And it changes every day
based on a certain amount of information that's being fed to it.
You know, you could change the time of day.
It could do all sorts of things.
But, so the the art world has a new canvas.
So to speak, with digital art.
So when you did the Astbury egg
with when you open it up, it has the, has to Bugatti.
There was 99 made of of them.
However you also had a digital image that came with each piece
and it was something unique about that digital image.
Can you tell us about that?
Yeah. So, we have a egg.
So the,
so this was interesting because, Bitcoin
as you know, is is now a major cryptocurrency.
And but the first, piece on, on Bitcoin
was the headline of Gordon Brown,
the banks are collapsing, financial crisis.
And about three years ago if I’m right, or maybe slightly longer,
someone worked out how to inscribe images
and other data onto the Bitcoin blockchain,
apart from the coin.
Now, the interesting thing with that is that you can't hack bitcoin.
There's no founder, there's no entity that owns Bitcoin.
Satoshi Nakamoto, no one knows who he is.
So that makes bitcoin the most independent structure of ownership.
So what we did we coded the egg shape.
And it's all code.
There's not a picture. It's all code.
And there's a light that goes behind the egg
and it changes completely randomly.
And it highlights the shape of the actual physical egg.
They're identical.
But this was one of the first inscriptions of its type.
It's actually the second type of inscription of its kind.
Now, there are 150 million inscriptions.
This is number two of of its kind.
So in the future,
people will start collecting
rare, digital art.
Rare artifacts, like kind of digital artifacts
some people call it.
And they will look to see, you know, the innovative ones,
the ones that were unique and especially the old ones.
So this is,
And we were the first to do that,
And we were the first brand.
We began, Asprey, the first brand to put that on the Bitcoin blockchain.
So how does one get to a position like yours?
You're a relatively young person, and, what did it take for you to get there?
I'm sure there was a couple of bumps in the road.
No one just gets to be the creative and founder of Asprey.
A long,
brand that has a huge legacy.
Well, that's for sure. Yes, thanks.
So I worked for the brand beforehand,
as an employee and freelance,
And then before that, worked in, I'm an artist as well.
so I worked in various roles in many in the film industry.
And over time, you know, you meet the right people as well.
And that's the key point.
But you also,
and I have a very good owner.
He's very supportive.
John Regus, I shout out to him, but, he,
but, he,
you know, sometimes you just have to just have to do it.
There must have been some obstacles along the way.
There's a lot of obstacles along the way, but, you either do it, you don't.
What's the worst that can happen?
You know?
But the way we structure the releases,
is that we, they're made upon order.
So it's made to order effectively.
And that enables us to not carry stock.
It also means, we also recycle 100% of everything.
But going back to your question the, you know,
I think there's a lot of challenges,
and especially when you're dealing with brands like Bugatti and,
and other brands that we've worked with and the British Museum,
you know, they're very, conservative as well as pioneering.
They have kind of that both of those things. Right.
They make the fastest carnival.
But at the same time they're like, oh, go be careful doing this or that.
They want to do it right.
Yeah.
And so far we've done it right.
And I think that's the key thing as well.
And you have to give something.
You have to
you have to be innovative and pioneering.
You have to do something that's completely different.
And that's the other thing.
Yeah.
And so how do you see, luxury
intersecting with art?
I think, you know, Art Basel in Paris.
You saw a lot of the French brands
in the contemporary art fair.
And that's starting to come about a lot more.
And there's a lot of brands that sponsor the art fairs now.
And so I think luxury and art
is kind of merging in a way.
But there are people that see that as,
I don't think tacky is the right word, but
but, not an art piece.
Right.
And I think they're right. I don't think that's art.
I think, you know, that's a collection
that an artist has, you know, done.
But, you know, art doesn't have, a utility purpose.
So to speak.
It's not, you know, a handbag, for example, has a purpose.
A wallet has a purpose.
So luxury always has a purpose.
It's just, you know, beautifully crafted or whatever.
Art don't care, right? It's not,
we're making you a wallet.
They're expressing their
their emotions and feeling that they're what they're trying to say.
So I don't think
art and luxury in that sense will ever combine.
But there are artists that help create collections for the brands.
Right.
And so and how do you see digital art going forward?
It's,
UBS wealth report this year,
14% increase in digital art sales.
So, it's the fastest growing art movement
in contemporary art.
So, a lot of people get confused between, you know, the minute you say digital art,
they think bored apes or cryptopunks, you know, that that kind of thing, right?
Digital art has been going since the late 1950s.
So there's a lot of artists that worked digitally
well before the kind of 2001 craze.
2001 is crypto.
That's when Ethereum came on the scene.
Crypto art is its own thing.
And then you have digital art.
Crypto art is its own culture, its own kind of collectors.
Digital art in the contemporary art sense,
is exploding because you are suddenly
getting something that you've never seen before.
Right.
Collectors, they collect, you know, paintings, whatever.
But suddenly,
wow, you've got something completely new.
And I think it will continue to,
be adopted by traditional artists.
So what is the focus for Asbury Studios with regard to digital art?
So we always have the digital and the physical pairing
because Asprey as the brand is known for its exceptional craftsmanship.
And the digital side is,
so when you buy a piece from us, you always have both.
And the relationship between digital and physical
can be much more intertwined.
You could buy products through a digital art piece
that creates, you know, the physical, for example.
And that's where I see the industry going.
Right, so,
what advice would you give, to young creators
navigating the intersection of commerce and technology?
It's,
you know, there's a lot of people that look at AI, for example.
But, you're only an artist.
You're not an artist through AI, right?
You have to study the traditional side to it first.
That's the first thing I'd say.
Right.
Learn how to draw, learn how to, you know do some research on art history as well,
you know.
Go to museums, go to the galleries and build
get a sketchbook, and always be sketching.
That's important.
If you remove those foundations and jump straight to like, you know,
you know, painting or digital art, then,
then you're not you're never learning about yourself kind of thing.
So that's my advice.
So if I'm a collector of digital art, what should I be thinking about
and how should I approach it?
Well, first you come to Asprey Studio.
But there's a there's a really good scene happening.
There's a really good scene.
It's a small group of collectors at the moment.
Some are institutions, as well, you know, hedge funds and museums.
But it's a small group, and it's really fun.
And the artists hang out.
We all hang out with each other.
And so I think, you know, get part of that because it's it is
you get to, to meet all the artists and you get to be part of something
that's going to, you know, start exploding and,
and some of these artists now that you could have bought for,
you know, a few thousand a couple of years ago
now selling for over a million and, you know, so.
Yeah. Yeah.
And so, like, you could be surrounded with these people
and be surrounded with, you know, people that have bought digital art.
And when I say digital art,
not crypto, I mean proper, digital art pieces.
Right.
And so if we were sitting here ten years from now,
how do you think the digital art world would look like?
I think,
I think two things,
I think people that own masters,
like Picassos, etcetera.
were fractionalized, use fractionalized technology,
to make good, make use of their asset base.
I think that's going to be big.
And the second thing I think,
digital art,
the screen technology, for example, will be incredible, right?
It will be probably be like
you put in your pocket, fold it on the wall.
And it’ll just be insane.
And you won't have to plug it in and that kind of thing.
But I think it will be
widely adopted and, and I think people will have digital
art as well as, you know, traditional art in their collections.
It's not going to replace anything, but it's a new type of art form.
So if you had to reflect since you started,
co-created Asprey Studios,
what would you have done differently or
what are you going to do differently going forward?
What would I've done differently,
It’s hard to say.
I don't know, it is a tough one.
I'm, I mean, we're in the fortunate position that we have the
gallery in Mayfair.
Right.
So that's a great head start, right?
Because you have that prestigious.
It's where the main countries are in the world.
What I've had done differently, I'm not sure.
Perhaps, like, got more people in at the start to accelerate the, the growth.
And so going forward, you do you have any exciting partnerships?
Yeah.
On the 20th, of November,
we have a partnership with Disney, starting with Marvel.
With Marvel.
And they have never really kind of done
any high-end art collection releases.
And this is the first digital, physical,
collection with Marvel.
It's a one of one.
So there's like one Iron Man, one Captain America.
And it has the digital art.
We've done dynamic digital art.
It’s on Ethereum.
And so this is a really pioneering release,
because for us, we want to make one of just one piece of,
for a collection is normally
cost prohibitive because you need, you know, you need to make the money on one.
So, this is very innovative.
It's a new,
it's not,
no one's ever done this as well.
It's new for Marvel.
It's new for Asprey Studio.
And I think it will find new collectors.
Right.
And it's kind of like the art world,
the popular culture world,
the traditional craftsmanship and the innovation of digital art
all kind of melting in one pot.
And, the last question I have for you, the craftsmen
that work for Asprey Studio,
how does one become a top masters, silversmiths person?
So, you can go, you can study it,
you know, at college or, you know, I think probably university,
but you go to
you find a master,
and the master has about 30 years of knowledge
and training and many awards.
But there's, the Goldsmiths Center, for example,
have apprentice schemes
that help, place people into,
silversmithing workshops.
But, yeah, but otherwise contact us and we can
we can,
help out.
Well, glad to have you Alister.
It was a great education
on the crossroads between art and digital art.
And, thank you very much.
Thank you Ben.
Thanks for having me.
Thank you for listening to Alister Walker from Asprey Studios.
It was a great conversation discussing art,
digital art and Asprey Studios.