21/04/2015

Daily Tips: Kartell Produces Sottsass’ Vases

There are certain individuals in the history of design, that always prove to be ahead of their time. One of them is the great Italian master, Ettore Sottsass. During this year’s Salone del Mobile, the Kartell company has presented a series of nine pieces designed by Sottsass in 2004. At the time, though, the pieces did not go into production due to limits in technology. Ten years later, Kartell has produced the six vases, two stools and a lamp, characterized by Sottsass’ peculiar visual language, evocative of his unique design process. Exuberant colours and rounded forms translate Sottsass’ timeless references into shiny, three-dimensional pieces.

“Technology enables us to realise Sottsass‘ designs with a quality and sophistication that would have been impossible ten years ago,” said the president of Kartell, Claudio Luti. “I am convinced that the maestro would have been enthusiastic as to how we have given life to his objects, that are one of a kind, unmistakeable, some of which will be projected towards a totally industrial and international future.”

The Blogazine 
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09/04/2013

Triennale Design Museum – The Syndrome of Influence

One of the most expected events in the design world inaugurates officially yesterday: Milan’s Salone del mobile has opened its gates to hundreds of visitors hungry for design novelty. It is inevitable, though, that a few questions are raised about the purpose of this event, its influence and its role both in the past as well as in the present. Tracing the past of Salone brings us to Triennale di Milano, a historical Italian institution devoted to the culture of design, born as an international event nearly 90 years ago with the idea of creating a platform for exchange between the industry and the applied arts.


Looking at the shows presented every three years at Triennale, we can see the Italian design culture grow and develop itself in what will later be recognized as an untouchable international excellence. From the shows devoted to Italian regime during the 30s to the innovative pavilions designed by Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni for Rai, each and every Triennale was a showcase of true design spirit, the one that changes profoundly our material reality. It is exactly this spirit, particularly significant in the context of the Salone, that the current Triennale Design Museum tries to reflect upon in a show that intertwines past, present and future, titled “The Syndrome of Influence”.

Structured in three different chapters, the show’s main goal is to tell its visitors how the famous Italian design culture was formed, starting from the period between the two World Wars. Hence, the first part of the exhibition gives the opportunity to several contemporary Italian designers (among which our favourites Studio Formafantasma and Martino Gamper to reflect upon the work and heritage of some of the most appreciated masters of Italian design. The second part of the show features a series of interviews with designers like Enzo Mari or Mario Bellini, who have witnessed the radical crisis in Italian design in act after the economical growth of the 50s and 60s.

The final stage of the show displays the work of some of the most interesting Italian brands, like Magis, Kartell or Alessi, reflecting upon the relationship between Italian companies and single designers, particularly significant for Italian design. Thus, this part of the exhibition tells us how ‘made in Italy’, which we are all so proud of, would never have happened without the curious intelligence of a handful of talented impresarios.

“The Syndrome of Influence” is particularly significant seen in the context of Salone del mobile, since it can teach us how only through silent dedication for one’s work, passion and wit, design classics can be brought to life, quite the opposite of what we can witness during one of the most frenzied design weeks, driven by pure need for novelty, marketing and, fundamentally, economy.

Rujana Rebernjak 
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13/06/2012

The Editorial: Pretence. Plastic.

The Editorial: Pretence. Plastic.

It’s likely that we’ve all sat in a Louis Ghost chair. Every fighetto and fighetta in Milan has one or two ironically hanging around their “design” apartment. For me, the first time was a few years back at a beach house in Tuscany adorned with iridescent shells and pastel pictures of boats that seemed to exist only to forcibly remind everyone inside that “you’re on holiday, AT THE BEACH, goddamnit”. Two Louis Ghost chairs sat, noses upturned, at either end of a long table flanked by another six, less stately (but also clear plastic) Kartell chairs. “This place is POSH, goddamnit,” they said, hollowly.

For a piece of iconic “design” (an irksome classification, since everything man-made is designed, and is therefore design), the Louis Chair is incredibly derivative. It is an old, established form rendered in new material. It is invisible, yet its symbolic intentions are crystal clear. It was the perfect companion to the literal gaudiness of shells and pastel boats, as it is the perfect companion to a kitschy nail salon decorated with tropical plants and smelling of acetone, as it is the perfect companion to the generic posters and bad brochures of a second-rate travel agency. The Ghost chair is pretence in plastic. Nothing more.

And although the chair has lost must of the ooh-aah, genius gee-whiz novelty it once had, it has unequivocally become an instantly recognisable classic. An icon not only for Kartell and Starck, but for the 2000s and for contemporary Italian design. And it will be the first ugly thing your kids sell for 50¢ at a garage sale when you die.

So, to honour this extraordinary object, artist Simon Martin this week opened an exhibition at Collective Gallery in Edinburgh focusing squarely on it. And while Scotland may not be the design powerhouse Italy is (was?), its artists are positively on fire. Plus, a hearty mix of whisky and bluntness might be just what the doctor ordered to knock some sense back into Italian design.

The exhibition is brilliantly critical. Although we’ve all probably given the Ghost at least some thought –certainly most designers have– but what an enigma it is! Deliberate, shamelessly appropriated, trapped in the present and yet thoroughly a relic of the past. Ugly. Stunningly gorgeous. Packed with history. Meaningless. In a short documentary, Martin juxtaposes the Ghost with plastic (ceramic?) lawn gnomes and their accompanying tree-trunk tables, African headrests, and a work by Donald Judd. Plastic wood. Wooden box. Box as symbol. Symbol as chair. And what it all does is call into question the very reasons for which we’d value such an object in the first place. It is the purest, clearest expression of our obsessive yet unthinking attachment to symbol. Perhaps ever. Why this objectively ugly chair has any value at all is pure sociological, anthropological, psychological magic.

While he may be a massive sellout (good businessman?), Philippe Starck is nothing if not an excellent designer. A designer who is extremely easy to hate for unleashing loads of ugly things on the world, but a very, very clever one, indeed. Maybe his snarky materialism–his oft-repeated mantra, after all, is “everything I make is absolutely unnecessary”–has actually been about coming to grips with the ills of materialism. Just maybe.

Tag Christof

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23/05/2011

The Editorial: Fix It Up

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The Editorial: Fix It Up

DIY has swept the world. Etsy has become a sprawling platform for thousands of micro creative endeavours. This weekend’s premier Maker Faire event in California’s Bay Area united thousands of do-it-yourself enthusiasts and set the blogosphere and Twitter on fire. And although the thrift shoppe/junk store has fallen out of favour as the prime shopping destination of the voracious hipster (as “hipster” is now merely another easily marketed-to ethnographic group), it is certainly fair to assume that we’ve made significant cultural inroads with this mass-revival of handicraft. But no matter how trendy DIY becomes, we remain a society of wasteful, wasteful children.

Let’s be honest: even the most staunch advocate of DIY lives in a world that is filled primarily with mass-produced objects. Furniture. Appliances. Electronics. Knicknacks. And certainly, we must! Most objects owe their existence in the first place, to the economies of scale and technical precision that is only possible through mass production. But, despite our best efforts, the “planned obsolescence” pioneered by the likes of designers Raymond Loewy and Brooks Stevens’ (and perfected in our generation by Steve Jobs and Jonathan Ives) will remain a major motor of the built economy for the foreseeable future. Simply, mass production isn’t the enemy – rather, it’s our reckless consumption of mass-produced things that is dangerous and unsustainable.

And, indeed, we throw some very nice things away. Our reflex to buy almost always seems to override any logical desire to repair. When something breaks – or starts to look less than perfect – we simply throw it away and replace it. That old espresso maker with a broken handle? Trash. The nice wooden table that would look stylish with a sand down and a new coat of varnish? Rubbish. The lamp that could use a new shade? Garbage. Instead of spending any time getting our hands a bit greasy (and brushing up our dexterity), we toss and re-buy.

While our society’s general propensity for buying cheap junk is part of the problem (throwing out objects designed to have short lives is inevitable), we tend to throw out nice things anytime they become démodé, too. Think of the countless classic rangefinders and Polaroids to be found for a few euros in any suburban junk shoppe that require only a thorough cleaning, a new battery and a roll of film. The beautifully-patterned old clothes waiting to be sewn into something new. The old books with lovely, lost typefaces.

Buying from “curated” vintage shops is concomitant recycling. But a real relationship with your objects – and a real, active contribution to sustainability – requires more than buying and consuming. And the deeper relationship you earn by maintaing older objects is therapeutic. You impose yourself upon them. They become personalised. And a mass object is transformed into a one-of-a-kind.


Our studio – a thoroughly modern, minimal place – is filled primarily with old, found and worked-over treasures: A recovered couch for guests, now painted pristine white. Several early 20th century Thonet chairs. Versatile height-adjustable found wooden stools and a sturdy old multipurpose table. A gorgeous MiM office chair from the line’s original 1960s Made in Italy range (MiM was back then a close relative of Fazioli grand pianos). An entire set of first-run 1974 Kartell 4875 chairs designed by Carlo Bartoli. Our most recent “acquisition,” is a circa 1995 drum scanner (complete with the requisite slightly yellow computer plastic of the era) whose superfluous quality kills that of expensive, much-newer flatbed scanners. Everything but the scanner was found – not searched for – after being thrown away by someone else.

Some of these objects could very well be museum pieces. But we use them, day in and day out because their inherent value is far from used up. And their inherent beauty, we feel, increases with age. Now, this isn’t an appeal for dumpster diving, nor is it a self-righteous lecture about recycling. But disposability is simply out of hand. This is broader than DIY: it’s foolish to think we can escape our manufactured world, so we must instead take steps towards truly engaging with it.

Tag Christof

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17/05/2011

Mr. Chair / Vin & Mong

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Mr. Chair / Vin & Mong

Salone Satellite is usually the antidote to the Salone del Mobile’s corporate main event, providing a glimpse at the work of future design greats before it is placed under the pressures of industry and commercialisation. As usual, there were several bright spots, from the impressive Superfarm project to surreal furniture laser-carved from solid blocks of marble, as well as a host of projects dedicated to sustainability and handcraft. But chairs are the lifeblood of Salone, and in this year’s cautious environment our favourite came from Korean design duo Vin & Mong, and just a few weeks after the event, we’re happy to report that the chair will almost certainly see production.

While Fabio Novembre’s surreal inside-a-face “Nemo Chair” for Driade caused quite a stir and Kartell’s huge plastic lineup is the best its been in ages, there was no big-named showstopper this year. No paradigm-challenging design exercises like Vitra’s “Chairless” to wow the crowds.

Vin & Mong’s muscly black chair, however, stopped us in our tracks. Billed Mr. Chair (and not to be confused with Mies Van der Rohe’s iconic MR Chair), it isn’t exactly subtle, but was one of the very few pieces we saw this year to combine generous measures of practicality and genuine imagination, as well as a sense of humour.

The designers’ take on the chair: “During our research of chairs, we found that armchairs and men have a lot in common, Men have arms, skin, and muscles and comparatively, armchairs have arms, leather and cushion. Mr. Chair shows the commonalities with a dignified wit.”

At once a sturdy armchair rendered in buttery soft leather and something to cuddle up with, we appreciate Mr. Chair for its sense of fun – something design has been sorely lacking in these recessionary times. It even captures a fair bit of the late 1970s zeitgeist that’s going around (especially if you hang a gold chain around its “neck”), and definitely provides better photo opportunities than Novembre’s creepy swivelling face.

Tag Christof – Images courtesy Vin & Mong

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