Designer Ferruccio Laviani captured the tension between neo-Rococo decoration and 21st century Italian minimalism in the Evolution credenza for the Italian manufacturer Emmemobili. One end is an intricately carved bombe chest with ball and claw feet. The highly detailed ornamentation dissolves into a sleek cabinet with brushed brass handles.
credenza by Emmemobili.
credenza by Emmemobili.
The Feeler lamp by Pudelskern is sheathed in hand-knit Tyrolean wool. It can be hung as a pendant light or used as a floor lamp with a metal spine to hold it upright. The company, which exhibited in the Satellite division of the Milan furniture fair, also showed knit pendant lamps — a popular item this year.
feeler-lamp
The global recession, one might expect inspiration and innovation to be in short supply at the world’s most important home furnishings show, which closed April 27. Yet the 2009 Salone Internazionale del Mobile, where top designers showcased their latest looks, offered proof that lean times can inspire fresh thinking.
Inspired by Maori legends, New Zealand designer David Trubridge created pendulous lighting fixtures that look like giant water droplets suspended in baskets made from aluminum, sanded plastic and bamboo plywood.
Giant-water-droplets
Giant-water-droplets
In Milan, high style trumps a down economy
Designers look to clean and classic forms for furnishings with staying power.
From Milan, Italy — GIVEN the demands of the global recession, one might expect inspiration and innovation to be in short supply at the world’s most important home furnishings show, which closed here Monday. Yet the 2009 Salone Internazionale del Mobile, where top designers showcased their latest looks, offered proof that lean times can inspire fresh thinking.
More than 2,700 manufacturers launched collections to more than 300,000 showgoers at the Milan Fairgrounds and at independent exhibitions all over the city, including the trendy Tortona neighborhood. Though some pieces — clearly in development before the recession — seemed indulgently luxurious, many were in step with the times, aiming to be sensible and sustainable despite the downturn.
It forces you to become more thoughtful and creative, to make things that will have lasting value,” Spanish designer Jaime Hayon said.
Added Italian designer Paola Navone, the artistic director of Gervasoni, “This is not the time for ostentatious things, which I hate.”
The recent wave of neo-Rococo furniture is ebbing as designers embrace lean, clean shapes in natural wood, colored felt and quilted fabric that took cues from minimalist Italian design and Scandinavian modern. Plastic was huge and so was lighting.
Butterfly chairs flew back indoors, as did lightweight leather sling chairs. Deer and birds went back into the woods, replaced as decorative motifs by rabbits and robots, of all things. Turquoise, a color that Navone called happy and optimistic, was everywhere. For accent pieces, yellow and purple reigned.
B & B Italia
B & B Italia
Patricia Urquiola premiered no less than three collections of outdoor furniture for B & B Italia, including the Crinoline outdoor lounge chair, woven in all-weather wicker with fanciful floral fretwork on the canopy back.
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