From tinsel-embellished chairs to a light that resembles both a caterpillar and a cake, a few standouts from the annual design fair in Milan.
The Italian design firm Dimore Studio created a set of themed spaces within a gallery that could be viewed through holes in the wall. Credit... Andrea Ferrari Modern Post Light
This year, Milan’s Salone del Mobile design fair, which concluded on Sunday, returned to its prepandemic schedule. It was a welcome change for attendees, who were able to take in not only a vast array of furniture and décor but also the beauty of spring in Italy. (Last year’s fair was postponed and happened during a particularly sweltering June.) Glimpsed from crowded sidewalks, the city’s courtyards looked more verdant and welcoming than ever. And the week’s events and exhibitions had a similar appeal, offering access to spaces that aren’t always easy to see — T’s annual Salone party, for example, gave guests the chance to wander the Villa Necchi Campiglio at night — as well as moments of unexpected enchantment. Here, a few things that left a lasting impression.
In the neo-Classical courtyard of the 16th-century Palazzo Isimbardi, at the center of which stood a crop of sculptures depicting oversize mushrooms, the Spanish fashion house Loewe displayed a collection of chairs on small navy, red and gray pedestals. Among them were 30 stick chairs — mostly antique, with jaunty splayed legs and spindle backs — that had been embellished by the brand’s creative director, Jonathan Anderson, in collaboration with several artisans. One was covered in lilac and moss green felt, another with loops of raffia in the shades of Funfetti. There were also eight wicker-like chairs created by the Belgian furniture maker Vincent Sheppard using a technique, invented during World War I, in which paper is wound around metal wire and then machine woven, producing a material hardier than its closest aesthetic counterpart, rattan. On one of these, the mushroom theme arose again: The seat was painted to look like a Fly agaric, red with irregular white dots.
The Arles, France-based design and research lab Atelier Luma brings together biologists, artists, farmers and engineers to explore sustainable materials. The stars of its presentation at Alcova — the sprawling contemporary design show that this year took place in the ruins of a former abattoir — were a series of brightly colored cylindrical stools made of recycled bioplastic, microalgae and plant materials; lightweight but sturdy, they can be stacked to achieve a desired height and doubled at the fair as hand drums for several small children. The lab also displayed other experiments, including towering columnar floor lamps formed from compressed salt embedded with LEDs and a yurtlike pavilion covered in brown felted wool that was intended, according to the wall card, to showcase the material’s “aesthetic and sound-absorbing properties.”
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