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Tag: wood

Azucena

Azucena

Founded in 1947 by Luigi Caccia Dominioni, Ignazio Gardella and Corrado Corradi Dell’Acqua. The Italian brand Azucena has always stood out for its collections that combine formal elegance, luxury, pure and crisp aesthetics and a very high workmanship.
The brand that the architects decide to call Azucena from the gypsy name of the play ‘Il Trovatore’, is created both to collect some of their furniture projects to be used for the furnishing of the buildings they design themselves and to be able to individually produce some furniture that is part of a series of furnishings designed by them. The three designers then start a rich production designed by them to take advantage of a repertoire of furnishings available for the houses they design. They are furnishings, lamps and experimental objects, which boldly use new materials, combined with traditional ones in a surprising and contemporary way, combining and often overlapping industry and high craftsmanship. Lacquer, polished chromed brass, crystal are the preferred materials in a constant search for brightness, brilliance, and transparency, which sometimes alternate with the softness of the velvet or the richness of the leather.

With Azucena a unique, very refined collection comes to life, with a series of pieces that have become iconic in a short time, characterized by the union of different materials, but always sought after, and by the recovery of traditional stylistic forms; above all the Catilina armchair, almost a Roman throne, where you have to sit down in a composed way, a concept much loved by the architect Luigi Caccia Dominioni, but also the Cavalletto table, with sinuous and rigorous shapes, reminiscent of the drawing benches at the polytechnic of Milan, or the Chinotto armchair, a small off-scale not without irony.

The lamps have a privileged position within the Azucena collection: Luigi Caccia Dominioni pays particular attention to light and lighting fixtures, taking advantage of unusual materials and techniques in a new and modern way. The result is some models of extraordinary beauty such as the famous Imbuto floor lamp, with a clear reference reinterpreted in a sober and cultured way, or as the cast iron table lamp, where the name itself reveals the author’s technical choice, or even as the Monachella reading lamp, light, transportable thanks to a ring at the end of the rod, conceived by the architect Caccia Dominioni not casually, but inspired by the headdress of the nuns of a Milanese convent, which he was building.

In 2018, the Azucena brand was acquired by B&B Italia, which wanted to preserve and relaunch it, in an active vision of the Italian heritage, the historic brand returns to the market with a series of “modern classics” designed by the architect Luigi Caccia Dominioni since the end of the 1940s. Chairs, sofas, tables and lamps that have written the history of Made in Italy design and which return today as a testimony to class and quality.

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m6 -Ferrero1947

M6

M6 is a project by Luca Montrucchio for Ferrero1947, which is born from the reflection on the behavior of the different materials and those who work in front of a fixed and predefined scheme.

The fulcrum of the project is a square, lightweight, tapered structure made of 6 mm diameter, black painted iron rod and completed by a horizontal cover with 2 vertical limbs to turn it into a seat or stand.

In a second phase, were selected six different materials : wool, glass, perforated sheet, leather, linen and wood rope, and the finished structure was assigned, with attachment the cover scheme, to 6 artisans, experts in their field, who interpreted the precise design of the designer, also technically solving the fundamental knots for the manufacture of the product.

The selection was rigorous:

for wool: the Dutch weavers of Thomas Eyck, who are experts in Irish wool work

for glass: Cristal King’s glassware in Turin

for the perforated sheet: the blacksmith of Roero Gatto

for the leather: the pellet and the Pinerolese saddle Calautti

for the flax rope: the ancient Massia hammer manufacture

for wood: Tesio, the historic Piedmont carpenter collaborator of Carlo Mollino

The result is a hybrid object, a table of chairs or seats, in all the different types, to be used individually or assembled with infinite combinations.

To complete the M6 ​​collection there is a bench, obtained from the repetition of the module, with seat in monochrome patch fabrics, and a wall structure, with the same proportions and lines, with inserts in perforated black sheet metal.

M6 is available from November in the FERRERO1947 gallery in Turin, in corso Matteotti 15 or online by mail.

Dick Van Hoff

Dick Van Hoff

Dick van Hoff was born in Amsterdam in 1971 and graduated from the Arnhem School of Art in 1996, now based in the east of the Netherlands.
After graduation, he immediately started designing with his name, opening a small studio, which follows the entire evolution of the project, from the first design phase to that of production; in all these years Van Hoff has produced a constant flow of exquisitely made objects.
Through his work as a designer and as professor-tutor at the Design Academy in Eindhoven, Dick van Hoff continues to play an important role in shaping the future of many young Dutch talents and what is called “Droog design thinking”. His promotion of fine craftsmanship coupled with industrial techniques forges a renewed interest in modern standards of form, function and adequacy.
The designer embodies universal values ??in modern products that seem to exist for centuries: functionality, quality and relationship between user and product give strength to projects; you will always sit well on a Dick van Hoff chair, one of his lamps will always impeccably illuminate the desired spot, his leather wood holder will still be among the best existing containers for wood to be placed next to the fireplace … functioning is more important than aesthetics, but this does not mean that form follows function; the designs are present, they are solid and convincing precisely because of their powerful visual language, they are icons that capture the heart.
Often robust in form, but subtly detailed, they are timeless objects, where their presence is obvious, their place in the house as logical and pleasant as a good friend.
Industrial customization guarantees an intact and penetrating way of production in which the quality, finish and choice of materials are fundamental; the designs are made with love: love for the product, the decision-making process, the user and the profession. Whether the design is produced industrially or manually, perfection and craftsmanship are always very visible.
Dick van Hoff’s work is represented in the permanent collection of the Boymans van Beuningen in Rotterdam, the Fond National d’Art Contemporaine, in Paris and the Centraal Museum in Utrech.

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Atelier Van Lieshout

Atelier Van Lieshout

Atelier Van Lieshout

Atelier Van Lieshout is the studio founded by the sculptor, painter and visionary Joep van Lieshout, who, after graduating from the Rotterdam Art Academy, quickly became famous with projects that oscillate between the world of design and that of art: sculpture and installations, buildings and furniture, utopias and dystopias. In 1995, Van Lieshout founded his studio and since then he has worked exclusively with the name of the studio, which includes more than twenty collaborators of different origins and backgrounds. They all work together in a large shed on the port of Rotterdam, divided into several departments: fiberglass, wood sculpture, metal. The designers are closely involved in the manufacturing process of each product; for this reason, the design and production of all the works signed by AVL must necessarily take place in this single place.
Over the past three decades, Van Lieshout has established a multidisciplinary practice that produces works on the borders between art, design and architecture, studying the fine line between manufacturing art and functional mass production objects and trying to find the borders between fantasy and function, between fertility and destruction.
Van Lieshout analyzes systems, be it society as a whole or the human body; he experiments, looks for alternatives, holds exhibitions such as experiments for recycling and even declared an independent state in the port of Rotterdam AVL-Ville in 2001: a free state in the port of Rotterdam, with a minimum of rules, a maximum of freedom and the higher degree of autarky.
All these activities are carried out in the typical provocative style of Van Lieshout, be it political or material, combining imaginative aesthetics and ethics with a great entrepreneurial spirit; his work motivated the movements in the field of architecture and ecology and was celebrated, exhibited and published internationally. His works share a series of recurring themes, motives and obsessions: systems, power, autarchy, life, sex and death – each of these traces the human individual in front of a larger whole like his well-known work Domestikator (2015) . This sculpture aroused controversy before it was even placed in the Louvre in the Jardin de Tuilleries, but was later adopted by the Center Pompidou where it was exhibited during the 2017 FiAC.

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Cassina

Cassina

La Cassina was founded in 1927 in Meda, in the heart of Brianza, by the brothers Cesare and Umberto Cassina, initially for the construction of supplies for large cruise ships, including the famous Andrea Doria, the interiors of which were designed by architect Gio Ponti. Then begins a historic partnership between Cassina and Gio Ponti, consolidated in the 50s, which will lead to the creation of many masterpieces of Italian design, among them the chair called “Superleggera”, weighing 1.66 kg, an intelligent and cultured rereading of the famous Chiavarina chair, built on the Ligurian hills.
After and at the same time as Gio Ponti, promising young Italian designers, such as Mario Bellini, Achille Castiglioni, Vico Magistretti, will begin to collaborate with Cassina, belonging to what is now universally recognized as the Milanese school; thanks to the courage and flair of Cesare Cassina the company begins to identify itself as a laboratory of the best Italian design, with a careful search for ever new technologies, made available to designers, and with a constant analysis of lifestyle changes and ways of living.
At the same time as this research and collaboration with contemporary designers, thanks to the foresight and perseverance of Filippo Allison, Cassina continues a philological discourse of re-examination, rediscovery and reproduction of historical masters of Italian and international design. Thus an independent catalog was born, called “The Masters” to be added to the contemporary one, where the proposals of Le Corbusier, Charlotte Perriand, Gerrit Rietveld, Frank Lloyd Wright find space, up to the recent acquisitions of the archives and rights of the works of Franco Albini and Marco Zanuso. To carry out this project correctly and philologically, the company relies on the collaboration of the foundations in charge, where they were created as in the case of the Le Corbusier Foundation, or direct heirs.
In more recent years Cassina has experimented with the collaboration with contemporary designers of various origins, such as the French Philippe Starck, the Italian Piero Lissoni or the Spanish Patricia Urquiola, always maintaining that common thread of research, experimentation and innovation in the world of living. The most recent projects, after the Cassina family leaves the scene, are entrusted to artistic directors, such as the current Patricia Urquiola, who try to give an interpretation of the Cassina world, also re-reading some classics with the inclusion of colors and finishes. new.
The catalog dedicated to the Masters, each year enriched with new projects with the approval of the Foundations and heirs, remains the most brilliant and commercially successful example of how historical design can survive many experiments that are sometimes unnecessary. An example of this enrichment is the dialogue carried out by the company with Pernette Perriand, children of Charlotte Perriand, which allowed the rediscovery of the figure of this great designer, mistakenly overshadowed by the master Le Corbusier, and many of his little-known projects from the general public.

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Artek, design moderno, architettura, arte, arredamento

Artek

Artek was founded in 1935 by four young idealists Alvar Aalto and his wife Aino, with Maire Gullichsen, daughter of an important Finnish wood magnate and her husband Nils-Gustav Haha, a rich businessman and cultured collector; his name founds the 2 essential elements together according to its founders: art and technology.
The company’s business strategy is very clear from the start: “selling furniture and promoting a culture of modern life with the help of exhibitions and other educational means.” The founders hope for a new type of environment for the life of all days, firmly believing in a great synthesis of the arts and wanting to make a difference in architecture and design, as well as in urban planning.
Thanks to this sophisticated company, Alvar Aalto was able to avoid the inflation and the massification of his projects, which he considered precious as lithographs: his works had to be not too numerous, to contain the effects, and not too limited, not to enhance them in a sense too artistic. All Aalto’s works were carried out by Artek, often following actual needs, or the fact of having to furnish his architectural projects, as in the case of the Paimio armchair, created for the Sanatorium of the same name or the Viipuri stool for the library of the same name. For his projects, Aalto always starts from the construction techniques of snow skis, a product widely used in Finland, coming to exploit in addition to the folding of wood with steam, a technique already used by Thonet, also the natural humidity of Finnish birch wood .
Particularly famous are its stools, which have undergone a significant variation with the passage of time: in the 1940s the model consisted of 4 legs and a seat opposite them, joined with screws, in the 1950s instead the supports in plywood were designed to open up like a fan to form the top of the seat (or table), as happens in nature for some organic and vegetable conformations, without the aid of screws.
Alvar Aalto’s wife, Aino Marsio Aalto, has been the company’s artistic director for many years, designing herself some very elegant objects such as glasses, vases and small accessories, but also graphic fabrics and absolute colors black and white.
Today Artek is renowned for being one of the most innovative and avant-garde for modern design, with the creation of new paths between design, architecture and art. The collection includes furniture, lighting and accessories from the Nordic masters Alvar Aalto, Ilmari Tapiovaara, Tapio Wirkkala, Eero Aarnio and Yrjö Kukkapuro, but also contemporary collections such as the projects of the Bouroullec brothers.

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Artek was founded in 1935 by four young idealists: Alvar and Aino Aalto, Maire Gullichsen, and Nils-Gustav Hahl. The business strategy of the company was “to sell furniture and to promote a modern culture of living by exhibitions and other educational means. The founders  advocated a new kind of environment for everyday life. They believed in a grand synthesis of the arts and wanted to make a difference in architecture and design as well as in town planning.

Today Artek is renowned as being one of the most innovative contributors to modern design, creating new paths at the intersection of design, architecture and art. The Artek collection comprises furniture, lighting and accessories by the Nordic masters Alvar Aalto, Ilmari Tapiovaara, Tapio Wirkkala, Eero Aarnio and Yrj Kukkapuro. Artek also works with leading international architects, designers and artists, such as Shigeru Ban, Konstantin Grcic, Hella Jongerius, Harri Koskinen, Enzo Mari and Tobias Rehberger.

Artek’s collection is based on the original idea of standards and systems, initiated by Alvar Aalto’s bent wood experiments that resulted in the L-leg system. The L-leg, a solid wood leg with a laminated part bent at 90°, was patented in 1933 and quickly became a standard component of Aalto’s furniture designs. The standard and system thinking makes the furniture range versatile and allows it to be customised for individual projects. It’s furniture can be found in various types of spaces: public areas, private homes, museums, schools, restaurants, hotels and offices.

Artek’s headquarter is in Helsinki, Finland, where Artek also has a flagship store in middle of the town. International offices are located in New York, Tokyo, Stockholm and Berlin, where the international marketing team is based.

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cappellini

Cappellini

Cappellini is a historic family of Italian design company, founded in Carugo in 1946 by Enrico Cappellini. a synonym of originality, modernity and experimentation, the brand Cappellini produces quality furniture, never banal and able to furnish any residential space and contract. Born as a small firm, the collections are characterized by refined simplicity and personality, dictated by the big names of international design, findings from its talent scout and corporate designer Giulio Cappellini. There is talk of Jasper Morrison, Marc Newson, Tom Dixon, Marcel Wanders, the Bouroullec brothers and Nendo, designers works as Cloud, Knotted Chair, Embryo Chair, Pylon Chair and many more, now become icons of the brand internationally recognized and exhibited in the most museums in the world such as the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, MoMA in New York and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. The collection consists of three divisions, Collection Systems and Project Subject to translate flexibly all requirements of contemporary furniture, and bridge the gap between design and traditional furniture.

The talent of the architect Giulio Cappellini in sniffing out new trends, understanding in advance the evolution of living and discovering first of all new designers on the international scene, has made the Cappellini collection unique, varied and cosmopolitan. In the Cappellini catalog you can find all the most significant design developments of the past 50 years: from Alessandro Mendini’s apparently irreverent projects of denunciation and reflection, such as the iconic Proust armchair, to the poetry and lightness of the works of the Japanese designer Shiro Kuramata, of which Cappellini holds exclusive rights for the whole world.
The long, constant and important partnership with the British designer Jasper Morrison, which every year creates new projects for the brand with the usual minimal and elegant trait that distinguishes it: the professional and friendship relationship between Jasper Morrison and Giulio Cappellini dates back to many decades ago, when the latter decided to put Jasper Morrison’s thesis project into production and in the catalog: the outdoor and indoor metal armchair with sinuous shapes and poetic name: Thinking man’s Chair.
According to Cappellini, the house can be colorful, whimsical, contemporary, but also minimal, bourgeois and reassuring, translating flexibly every need for contemporary furniture, not being able to have any boundaries or limits.

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carl hansen & son

Carl Hansen

Carl Hansen, a Danish company founded in 1908, was one of the first industrial companies to believe in the complicity between craftsmanship and mass production . Now, as ever, producing seats, sofas, bookcases and wooden tables inspired by the vintage design.
Craftsmanship can be a lot of things. To us, it is everything and it has been so ever since 1908 when Carl Hansen founded his company in Odense, Denmark.

Carl Hansen founded his company on a strong belief: outstanding craftsmanship and rational serial production could go hand-in-hand to provide customers with high-quality furniture at a reasonable price. Today, we continue to build on this simple but strong idea. We combine traditional woodworking techniques with the latest technology to produce furniture of lasting value. Most of the furniture we produce today was designed by leading Danish architects back in the 1930s and up to the 1960s, but the design, the vision and the craftsmanship behind every piece of furniture is still as relevant today as it was then. If not even more so today. This is why our dedication to working with the best materials and the best designers has and will always be fundamental to Carl Hansen & Son.

At Carl Hansen & Son, we feel a great responsibility to keep bringing this sustainable idea forward of producing furniture with a long life, made of wood harvested from sustainably managed forests and treated in a way that is as gentle as possible for the environment.
Our skilled craftsmen and -women still work with the same pride and dedication and it this passion that helps us maintain the same high quality in every piece of furniture that leaves our factory in Gelsted.

Behind every piece of furniture lies vision, careful thought and skilled craftsmanship. That’s why we say, that every piece comes with a story. And we hope you’ll enjoy making it a part of yours.

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ClassiCon

ClassiCon

ClassiCon is a German company, based in Munich, that challenges time, presenting a design that has spanned the centuries without losing appeal and modernity; its name itself is a “classic” and “contemporary” case, highlighting its duplicity from the beginning, aspiring to offer pieces of established characters who have made the world of design history since the early 1900s such as Eileen Gray and Eckart Muthesius, but also to promote contemporary design and present examples of new design with advanced quality and shape, giving it the “classic” designation. The brand is synonymous with high quality, strong individuality and timeless aesthetics, out of passing fashions. Classicon objects are timeless pieces, combinable in any domestic or business context, with a strong personality, but outside the most fleeting trends in the world of design.

Many collaborations with young international designers, with whom the company establishes a lasting partnership that continues over the years, creating a design history linked to each individual designer. The most intense and productive partnership is certainly that with the Munich designer Konstantin Grcic, who, since the first projects with the company, has included refined references to the iconic design work of Eileen Gray: the projects of Konstantin Grcic, who later became a star world of contemporary design, I am the result of careful reasoning on ergonomics and the contemporary way of life, with cultured quotes to the masters of design in a never banal or dusty reinterpretation.

Eileen Gray’s projects are all produced and present in the Classicon catalog, which is the worldwide licensee of Aram Design Ltd: in the early 70s Eileen Gray began to collaborate with the manufacturer Zeev Aram to develop her furniture and its lamps for series production. Finally, in 1973 the designer signed a worldwide contract with Aram Design in London to bring all her projects into production for the first time. Classicon is therefore the exclusive licensee of the entire Aram collection by Eileen Gray.

Quality is a fundamental element for the company, so much so that each piece is indelibly and consecutively marked and numbered, as a concrete and visible testimony to the attention paid to the production of each individual specimen. The Classicon signature therefore guarantees the use in the production of high quality materials and methods, with compliance with all ecological requirements; the quality control of the production is very high. The logo and the progressive numbering offer the guarantee that each limited edition is an authentic replica of the original, made with the consent of the rights holders and with absolute respect for the original itself.

High quality and timeless furnishings are therefore the key points of the ClassiCon philosophy, which can boast the presence of its furnishing elements in numerous European and international design museums.

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de padova

De Padova

The history of De Padova spans all decades from the 1950s onwards, with unchanged elegance and sophistication.

In the 1950s, Fernando and Maddalena De Padova started their entrepreneurial business by importing Scandinavian furniture and objects sold in the showroom in via Montenapoleone in Milan. For the first time, northern European design arrives in Italy: its simplicity and rigor become a new possible proposal in the field of design.
In the 1960s, during a trip to Basel, Maddalena De Padova accidentally discovered Charles Eames’ Wire Chair; in a few months, Maddalena meets the American company Herman Miller from which she obtains the production license for Italy of the products designed by Charles Eames and George Nelson. ICF De Padova is founded, based in Vimodrone, which will produce Herman Miller office furniture in Italy. From this meeting Maddalena De Padova absorbs the secrets that will constitute the heart of her philosophy: the importance of the environmental context by George Nelson, the “connections” by Charles Eames, the role of objects by Alexander Girard. The large showroom in Corso Venezia in Milan is inaugurated, an extraordinary exhibition space on three levels, where design becomes the protagonist.

After Fernando’s death, Maddalena De Padova personally takes care of the company, follows its production activity and distribution; ICF is sold and a new company is founded which focuses on the edition of new furnishings, its name: Edizioni De Padova, then simply E ’De Padova. Vico Magistretti began his long collaboration with the company in these years by designing a collection of office furniture with its usual elegance; it will be the beginning of a happy partnership that will enrich the De Padova catalog with many masterpieces that have entered the history of Italian design: from the Silver chair, to the Vidun table, from the Pillow sofa to the Shigeto container.

Achille Castiglioni designs a series of displays for the windows that confirm the uniqueness of the company’s style, the true theatrical staging of design, where the windows overlooking Corso Venezia become a unique stage on the Milanese and then world design scene; settings played on irony, creativity and awareness of wanting to tell a story. Castiglioni also designs some pieces of great beauty for the collection, such as the 95 table and the Scrittarello desk. He joins the Dieter Rams group: Maddalena De Padova falls in love with her 606 bookcase and decides to produce aluminum for the Italian market: the 606 bookcase still remains the best example in the world of a container for storing books.

At the end of the 90s the collaboration with Renzo Piano began for the furnishing of the café of the Center Georges Pompidou in Paris, followed by, among others, the furnishing of the Morgan Library restaurant in New York and the Sole 24 Ore headquarters in Milan: all the most elegant domestic or business interiors perfectly fit the furnishings of the De Padova catalog. In the 2000s Maddalena De Padova received the Compasso d’Oro for Lifetime Achievement and reopened the space of the former I.C.F. factory, completely renovated and enlarged, which became the company’s headquarters. Patricia Urquiola and Nendo join the team designers alongside the historical collection. Maddalena De Padova completes the transfer of the company’s leadership to the children Valeria and Luca who further develop it by giving it a managerial structure. In April 2015, the company was acquired by Boffi, which allows the company an international distribution program, with the passion and all-Italian heritage that unites them.
De Padova remains firmly an example of Italian timeless elegance, where a correct balance, excellent design and great respect for the Italian design tradition continue to furnish the houses and the most refined spaces of Italians and now also all over the world, in furrow of the choices, still very current, of Maddalena De Padova.

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