Salone Del Mobile Milan 2016
Now the dust has settled on another year in Milan and we’ve recovered from our whirlwind tour (and aching feet) of the most important and biggest exhibition in the furniture calendar we thought we'd give you a quick run down from some of our favorite products and manufacturers that caught our eye.
It’s such a mammoth event that its often quite hard to see the wood for the trees but it’s a great place to catch up with some of the manufacturers we work and have a look at their new products as well as hopefully stumbling across someone new that we've not seen before. All of the main players in the industry have the most fantastic stands and this year’s stands by Moroso and Kartell were no exceptions.
Magis celebrated 40 years with tiered seating museum set up showcasing some of their most iconic creations by the likes of Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec, Konstantin Grcic and Jerszy Seymour from the Magis collection.
Sancal are a company we really like. They always seem to be pushing in new directions whether it be new forms or finishes and their stand this year was no exception. We especially liked the new Tonella chair with its bronzed frame and Mosaico system with marble topped tables and coloured metal work.
Arper have such a great range of products now with what seems like a constant conveyor belt new designs each year. However one of the hits was the new colour pallet on the Catifa 46 range which seems like a stroke of genius and really gives what is already a brilliant product a nice boost. Their stand was very clean and well structured allowing the products to shine which (isn't always the case at these exhibitions) so it was great to get a really good look at some of the most recent products like Steevie and Zinta as well as a really great new table system called Meety.
Vondom's stand was also very interesting as it gave us the opportunity to view a number of products we know of but haven't seen in the flesh before. The collections main focus is around outdoor ranges including seating, planters and has a very glamour "beach club" feel to it. Working with renowned designers like Fabio Novembre, Stefano Giovannoni, Eugeni Quitllet, Ora Ïto, Ross Lovegrove, Karim Rashid, Javier Marisca the companies passion for creating interesting shapes that are functional, fun and stylish is obvious..
Pedrali's move towards a more design led collection was exemplified by a fantastic stand showcasing a huge range of new products. The new Dome chair in injected polypropylene with its optional perforated shell was light, bright and fun. The Lunar table range has a number of really great marble top finishes whilst the Social modular seating system has been expanded to give it even further versatility.
Thonet is a name synonymous with some of the greatest furniture design of all time and it’s great to see a company of such stature not only with some new products but also reinventing some of its best. The Range 2000 Sofa system and Range 860 Armchair are really nice additions to the manufacturers collection however what really caught the eye was the classic S 33 N chair in its new "All Seasons" variant with coloured frame really bringing a great product back into the spot light again.
No show is complete without Vitra releasing something new and interesting. On the back of quite a few new products they released the All Plastic Chair. What looks to be a classic wooden chairs its actually a combination of plastic components resulting in a single piece frame with a thin seat surface that's organically shaped and the backrest more finely modeled than the back support of conventional wooden chairs. The combination of two types of plastic also offers new possibilities for the colour scheme: the All Plastic Chair is exclusively available with a 'two-tone' palette pairing frames in a slightly darker shade with seats and backrests in a lighter nuance of the same hue. This interplay of colours lends the chair a distinctive look and transports its classic shape into a contemporary context.