It's no easy task whittling down the thousands of new lighting and furniture designs that hit the market every year during Salone del Mobile and Milan Design Week. To edit it down to a bold whole number like 50 is purely to lend the number a sense of importance - like half centuries and centuries. Design daily could have made it 100 but after our mammoth installations post it seemed a little excessive. The term 'Best' is used for the purposes of descriptive simplicity and is a selection of personal favourites whether they were selected for their shape, materials, beautiful construction or unique concept - or a combination of all of these attributes.
2018 was a very interesting year with a huge number of exciting reissues from the 30's through to the 80's finding their way back into production and a some great lighting designs despite the fact that it wasn't Euroluce (the massive lighting fair that runs in conjunction with Salone del Mobile every second year). 2018 was a Eurocucina year, when the secondary focus of Salone del Mobile turns to kitchen and bathroom products (which runs every alternate year to Euroluce). Suffice to say it is a herculean task to also cover these products and there are websites which are much better equipped at assessing new products of this sort so Design daily has made no attempt to cover these in this post. Apologies to all those design focused chefs out there but to make amends here are two interesting kitchen concepts that break from the norm.
LIGHTING
The two lighting designs below are from the Observatory Collection by Lee Broom. The horizontal and vertical tube design on the left is called 'Orion' The horizontal version is called 'Tube', the vertical is called 'Globe'. The pendant and table lights on the right featuring two interlocking discs are called 'Eclipse'.
Danish brand Karakter Copenhagen launched a large amount f beautiful product this year amongst them the proportionally perfect 'Pearl' pendant by Nick Ross. The combination of the dome-shaped smoke coloured glass and the large internal etched sphere is exceptionally beautiful. The 'Lari' table light by Mangiarotti has been doing the design fair rounds since last year with Karakter but the version on show at Palazzo Litta this year was it in its final production form. The light features a ribbed mouth-blown glass shade. It was originally designed by Mangiarotti in 1978.
Both the lights below are by Massimo Castagna for Gallotti & Radice. On the left is the ‘Bolle Tela’ chandelier, on the right is the the ‘Narghile’ pendant.
Below left is Cecilia Xinyu Zhang’s ‘Equant’ light below right is the ‘Elementari’ pendant by Elisa Ossino for De Padova.
FURNITURE
Cassini celebrated 50 years in their showroom in via Durini not only with a complete makeover of the space adding a new basement level and renovating the domed cupola at the top of the building but with a massive number of reissues from as early as the 1920's in the case of Gerrit Rietveldt's 'Beugel' chair (see below), the 40's in the case of Frank Lloyd Wright's 'Taliesin' armchair (at the top of this post), right through to the sixties with Vico Magistretti's '905' chair.
You can watch a video on the collaboration between BD Barcelona and Bolon for the making of Stephen Burks' 'Grasso' armchair (seen above) here.
Seen below are two examples of a collection of 'QD 03' tables in lacquered turned timber by David Lopez Quincoces for Six Gallery.
The chairs below couldn't be more different but somehow express a similar generosity of volume through arched arms in the case of Denis Guidone's 'Minima' chair for Mingardo (left) and the curved underside of seat in the David Lopez Quincoces designed 'QD 01' chair for Six Gallery.
More chairs that express some new construction ideas. Both are aluminum but the 'Marc Newson Aluminum Chair' on the left is cast alloy with a mesh seat (a heavy investment in tooling required to create this) while the 'Elipse' chair on the right by Patrick Jouin for Zanotta uses a bent extruded aluminum frame and tecnopolymer seat and back. The later creates a strong visual impact with a round hole in the backrest.
The chairs below are both from Living Divani which had a great year in 2018. The 'Rivulet' chair (shown left) by Junpei & Iori Tamaki, (who also designed Living Divani's 'Tonbo' coat stand featured later in this post) is available either in black tubular metal or in natural bentwood with natural or black leather binding. The chair on the right is called 'Era' and is by David Lopez Quincoces of Quincoces-Drago.
ACCESSORIES
Shown below are a selection of the seven glazed ceramic vessels designed by Natalie Du Pasquier for Bitossi. The work was originally designed by Du Pasquier in 2017 for the exhibition ‟Other Rooms” curated by Jenni Lomax at the Camden Arts Center in London. Shown here in beautiful images by Delfino Sisto Legnani.