Like all iconic design, the Moscardino fork-and-spoon is both classic and contemporary. With three prongs on one end and a shallow bowl at the other, it is created out of biodegradable plastic. An invitation to scoop, spear and throw away, it’s tailor-made for the nomads, partygoers and desktop diners of the 21st century, yet the charm of its no-frills form is timeless.
Created by Matteo Ragni and Giulio Iacchetti for the small Milanese company Pandora Design, Moscardino already has a place in the permanent collection of New York’s Museum of Modern Art. It is also one of the highlights of a just-opened exhibition, New Italian Design, at the Triennale in Milan.
Featuring 300 pieces of work, the exhibition aims to shine a spotlight on 125 Italian designers under the age of 45. Their names do not carry the same cachet as those of their forebears who made Italy the world’s most important producer of furniture and homewares. But, argues the Triennale’s design curator, Silvana Annicchiarico, they deserve recognition.
“The legacy left by the great Italian maestri, such as Ettore Sottsass and Achille Castiglione, has been heavy,” she says. “The generation who followed worked in their shadow. They were highly accomplished but not stars.”
As the 1980s – the era of Sottsass’s Memphis movement – drew to an end, the design scene went global. Suddenly innovation was the province of Holland (Droog, Marcel Wanders) and Britain (Ron Arad, Ross Lovegrove, Tom Dixon, Jasper Morrison) then France (Erwan and Ronan Bouroullec) and Spain (Patricia Urquiola). Even within the Italian furniture manufacturing industry, the success of pieces such as the Favela chair, designed by Brazil’s Fernando and Humberto Campana for Edra in 2003, eclipsed anything homegrown talents could offer.
For young Italian designers the situation has been difficult. While subsidies were made available to many of their European counterparts, they received little state support and, after graduation, few moved into the furniture business. “Of 11,000 alumni in 1999-2000 only 3,000 are employed by homeware design firms,” Annicchiarico says. “We want to know where the other 8,000 have gone.”
According to a recent report from Milan Polytechnic, most are working in “new” design areas such as websites, communications, cars, fashion and jewellery. This expanded reach explains the eclectic nature of the Triennale show. From Amaterasu comes The Midnight Pump, a space-age court shoe in high-tech polyurethane; from Donatella Parruccini there are Fly drawing-pins backed with an insect motif; from Enrico Azzimonti and Jordi Pigem is the minimalist birdcage Sinus, a semi-spherical glass bubble pierced with holes on a smooth base. A throw-away bubble-wrap rosary, RosAria, is the invention of JoeVelluto, while Orto, from Marco Zito, is a hockey-stick-like pole with a net for picking fruit.
There is stunning homeware, too. Lazy Mary by Monica Graffeo, for example, is an undulating daybed for indoors or outdoors made out of a single piece of injection-moulded resin with organic, petal-shaped curves reaching out to the body like an embrace. Deep Design’s led floor lamp, Dandelion, is a witty, elegant sphere of glass funnels on a willowy steel stem that could have been inspired by a child’s drawing of a bushy-topped tree.
Coincasa is a range commissioned by Coin, a department store with a profile similar to Marks and Spencer in the UK, and its raison d’être is resurrecting the tradition of Italian design. Funky yet functional, the pieces range from tables, poufs and chairs to lamps, cushions, kitchenware and even a pet-travelcase-cum-basket. All brim with colour, wit and presence.
From Gilbertini and Mirri comes Lem, a 21st-century spin on the rocking chair, which comprises a lemon-shaped scoop of rattan upholstered in zesty yellow-green Lycra. From Luca Nichetto there is Upe, an armchair with an airy, hemp-wrapped frame inspired by 18th-century hoop petticoats. Alessandra Busana has created warm-hued candles, Cin Cin, that resemble bottles, glasses and tumblers. Alessandra Baldereschi’s Cinderella range of tableware includes tablecloths with built-in heat-resistant mats and teatowels. Matteo Ragni’s Una employs baskets to create a flexible bookcase-cum-storage-system. The range will be launched at this month’s Salone del Mobile and be on sale from September.
“Making furniture for Coincasa was very welcome because the big Italian houses rarely give us the opportunity,” says Matteo Bazzicalupo of Deepdesign, who produced, among other objects, a small and neat wenge-wood dressing table and a bookcase in polished steel with non-slip felt shelves.
The aesthetic emerging among young Italian designers is playful and laid-back, emphasising pieces that are multi-functional, eco-friendly, frequently disposable. It is a far cry from the sleek, expensive aesthetic espoused by the iconic names of the past.
“Italians come from a tradition of serious industrial design but this generation realises it cannot simply copy the great masters,” explains Cristina Morozzi, a prominent design journalist and critic who curated the Coincasa collection. “Their tradition means that they are not decorators such as Marcel Wanders or Tord Boontje. They are makers. So they have focused on creating understated, multi-functional pieces ideal for a nomadic, fast-moving, environmentally aware society. They seem very simple but they conceal hidden possibilities.”
The creativity flourishing in both Coincasa and the Triennale show suggests that “small is beautiful” might be the mantra for 21st-century Italian furniture. “It’s amazing how much innovation and freshness there is in the smaller firms and studios,” Annicchiarico says.
Ragni, who teaches at Milan Polytechnic, agrees. “When my students moan about lack of opportunities, I have little sympathy. I tell them: ‘You have to look further than working for [big name manufacturers such as] Cappellini and Alessi’.”
One of his best clients, for example, is Pandora. Staffed by its three founder members, the company’s biodegradable plastic tableware can be found in the Victoria and Albert Museum shop in London and at Spazio Rosanna Orlandi in Milan. “Small companies have an edge when it comes to adapting to trends and possibly a greater knowledge of their material,” says Daniela Danzi, one of the Pandora directors. “We have researched our plastic so thoroughly that customers can’t bear to throw away even our disposable collection. They buy the cups and plates for parties and then take them home with them.”
Ragni also tells students to consider working for companies in other countries, turning the tables on manufacturers that have tapped talent from abroad. “Two of my clients are Mitsubishi and Samsung, and the Japanese and the Italian aesthetics are very compatible,” he says. “Everyone says it was easier before globalisation because there were fewer designers but there was less of a market too. And, personally, I’m as influenced by Eames as I am by Sottsass.”
New Italian Design, Triennale di Milano, until April 25 then at the Tokyo Triennale, tel: +39 02-724 341; www.triennale.it
Coincasa Design will be on view at the Spazio Magna Pars from April 15-23 , tel: +39 02-837 3034; www.coin.it
