Continuing with my posts on the stuff I saw at the Salone Internazionale del Mobile in Milan … here is a mix bag of brands – avant garde (driade), then mainstream modern housewares (Alessi) and plastic furniture (Kartell) …

driade, founded in Italy in 1968, like to define itself as an aesthetics laboratory. See their web site here (also where I took the above screenshot).

 

On driade’s website, about its history, it says:

… the multiplicity of languages that make it difficult to identify trends or relationships. A variety of authors, not always easily assessable and not all entirely acceptable, is building this century, which is characterized, in art and design, by pluralism, multiplicity of signs, and “idiolects” – as Roland Barthes called the use of language specific of a single author. 

Compared to some of the modern classics I saw (Vitra, Cassina – see earlier posts here and here), this statement about Driade’s pieces does make some sense.

The last time I was in Milano, I went to their showroom and wrote a blog post – here.

Norma by Borek Sipek.

Apollonia (the lights) also by Borek Sipek.

Alessi – needs no introduction.

They have a store on the main raised pedestrian walkway.

As well as a store selling pots and pans inside one of the exhibition halls.

They were probably one of the very few companies that were not just showing but were actually selling something.

I had no idea that Alessi makes so many different models of watches.

Since I posted about Kartell in Paris (click here), here are a couple of photos of their exhibition space surrounded by bright yellow gold curved walls.

I did not like their space, too cluttered and it barely showed off their products. I honestly do not remember what I saw, especially after I have already been exposed to hundreds of chairs …

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