The aisles of the Salone Satellite, the “fringe” section of Milan’s annual furniture fair, seethe with hopes and dreams. The event, now in its 10th year, is a showcase for 500 young designers, all hungry for commissions. The primary goal is self-promotion. But some of the exhibitors also have a broader mission, acting as the first ambassadors from their countries at the show.
“I visited the Salone last year and I really wanted to participate,” says Shahira Hamed Fahmy, a 32-year-old Cairo-based architect and designer, who marks Egypt’s debut at the show.
She brought her Tik Tak bar stools, hand made in wood and spray-painted in gilt, copper and dark brown with gold leaf decoration, and Tableya, a low, circular table in wafer-thin, gold-hued stainless steel. The former is a trio of bold, burnished columns with splendidly warped forms that allow drinkers to lean, sprawl or sit in comfort; the latter resembles the type of dining tables used by traditional Middle Eastern families. Both are a perfect marriage of contemporary and classic style equally suitable for a penthouse or a palace. “They have retained a touch of Egyptian and Islamic style,” Fahmy says.
Still, she was determined to launch her career outside her home country. “Obviously I hope that an international name will buy my work,” she says. “In Egypt there is still a culture of furniture-making rather than design. It is difficult to convince [manufacturers] to turn out something contemporary that may not be commercial.”
According to Marva Griffin, founder and curator of the Salone Satellite, it’s common for people whose countries have only fledgling design industries to draw inspiration from their roots even as they push to have work produced and sold abroad. “They still feel very close to their own traditions and iconography,” she explains. Yet they can’t achieve the success they want in their local markets.
Take 31-year-old Jitrin Jintaprecha from Thailand, who works in traditional Asian materials such as rattan, teak and water hyacinth and who is also exhibiting at the Salone Satellite this year. Already well established in his own country, he is now starting to make a name for himself in the US with designs such as Ripple. Doubling as a chaise longue and a coffee table and designed for indoor or outdoor use, the piece is a generous square of golden teak on stainless steel legs that flows into a sensuous wave in one corner. “It is our most popular item,” says Willard Ford of Los Angeles interiors showroom Ford Brady. “People are transfixed by it. When children come in they play on it.”
Jintaprecha and his friend Suppapong Sonsang are also showing Kontour, a sofa-and-armchair set made from a curvaceous frame of steel pipes that can be upholstered in different materials.
Poland’s first entry at the Salone is KnockoutDesign Group, an all-female trio who met in childhood and are now twenty-something masters students in the architecture, interior and industrial design programme at the Academy of Fine Arts in Posna. “When we tell people what we do they are really enthusiastic,” says Dorata Kabala, the group’s spokeswoman. The arrival of Ikea in Poland has helped, she adds. “People see nice-looking things there that are not too expensive and they begin to say: ‘Where are the Polish designers?’ ”
Their work has all the hallmarks of new, international design – witty, ingenious, eco-friendly – but there is also a distinct post-communist, eastern European flavour. The roll-up Takeaway coffee table, for example, is no more than a flat square with arcs sliced out of each side that fold down to become legs. But a shoeprint design patterns the surface and it is available in four materials including PVC and the stiff cardboard used for soling shoes. “We wanted to design for people similar to ourselves who travel a lot and change flats frequently. When you stop travelling, you will put up the table and take off your shoes,” Kabala says.
The Punch Me lamp, made of black sponge with a handprint to show you where to switch it on, displays the same tounge-in-cheek tactics. “You really have to punch it, which makes you think about saving energy,” she explains.
Vesna Pejovic, a freelance designer from Belgrade, is another newcomer to Milan. Last year the Serbian capital held its first Design Week, attended by international stars such as Karim Rashid, Ross Lovegrove and Konstantin Grcic. “It was great to hear people like that lecture,” recalls Pejovic. Now, she wants to bring Serbian design to the world.
Her Milan stand, dubbed Plain, consists of two coat racks, a chaise longue, an armchair and a standard lamp, all displayed against the backdrop of “a meadow in spring . . . with sounds recorded from a real meadow playing”. The project evolved out of Pejovic’s fascination with bionic research into natural forms. “It has inspired me to make pieces that look as if they could move,” she says by way of explanation.
Her featherlight Maslacak lamp balances a white paper shade on top of a trembling, Giacometti-like metal stand. The Vlati coat rack is a row of metal poles that seem to sway like windswept reeds. Meanwhile, the Mrav chaise longue and Cvet armchair are simple sheets of plywood upholstered, respectively, in natural felt and leather that fold up into three dimensions. “They imitate the curling motion of leaves,” explains Pejovic.
Having been commissioned to create the interiors for Belgrade’s first design hotel (“It’s going to be really cool and a little bit silly!”) she seems to be bursting with confidence about her prospects at Milan.
Equally optimistic is Bosnia’s first representative at the Salone Satellite, 34-year-old Jasna Mujkic, although she acknowledge that the genesis of her elegant Field armchair, with its slender, upholstered frame that folds into myriad positions, came from personal experience rather than national heritage.
“The idea came to me after I had a child,” she says. “I realised that a mother’s body can adapt to any position the baby needs – sitting, reclining, sleeping. My idea was to give a small amount of that flexibility to an armchair.”
In spite of all their imaginative flair, none of these designers is guaranteed success in Milan. “I think they may be surprised to find themselves a little naïve in comparison with designers from countries where design is already ‘at home’,” Griffin says.
But it does no harm to be the innocent abroad. An exhibition running alongside the Salone Satellite entitled A Dream Come True features hundreds of products shown for the first time as prototypes at the fringe event that were eventually manufactured and sold by the world’s top furniture and homewares companies. Rossana Orlandi, who runs an eponymous Milan showroom and is renowned for nurturing up-and-coming talent, says she walks through the aisles of young designers every year. “What I am looking for is an idea, an emotion, something I can’t live without,” she explains. “I don’t want to see copies or reinterpretations.’
She’ll find no shortage of creativity among this crew of first-timers. As Pejovic declares firmly: “The good thing about not having a strong industry in your own country is that it lets you experiment.”
■Salone Satellite, Pavilion 22 and 24, Rho fairgrounds, until April 23, tel: +39 02-725 4941; www.cosmit.it
■Spazio Rossana Orlandi, Milan, tel: +39 02-4 6744 7244; www.rossanaorlandi.com
■Ford Brady, Los Angeles, tel: +1 310-800 3999
