Wooden furniture are timeless jewels in our homes, discover how Dome redesigns wooden pieces with modern tones and innovative design
Our piece on wood starts with the “Manualmente” exhibition in Villa Necchi (on display until the 7th of January 2018). Manualmente is a show dedicated to the Italian and foreign craftsmanship, this edition being dedicated completely to wooden furniture.
The exhibition displays objects from the seventeenth century to the late 1900’s, including objects made by the greatest designers of the last century. Other 200 wooden models are shown inside the Portaluppi villa, finding a natural placement next to wooden furniture that have always been a part of the Milanese villa. These models, used in the beginning of the nine hundreds to make the clients see how the products of their request would be used, amuse the bystander because of its fine craftsmanship and because of the extreme attention to detail. The exposition also makes us reflect on the usage of the “model”, used by designers before the arrival of the industrial design. For centuries, this procedure has seen designers and artisans working side by side. The display shows some of the greatest personalities of the 1900’s, artists, not only Milanese, that have dedicated their lives to the wood working. An example is the great carpenter Pierluigi Ghianda, for whom the entire attic has been dedicated, where - thanks to the materials donated by his relatives - his working studio has been reconstructed. Inside this ambiance we can find some of the objects that have marked Ghianda’s collaboration with some of the most famous designers of the 1900’s: Gianfranco Frattini, Gae Aulenti and Cini Boeri are some of the great collaborations set up between the great woodworker and the leaders in design of the century. In particular we find designs for retractable wooden hangers made by Gae Aulenti, whose design for a music stand for the Musée d’Orsay can also be found there. From Cini Boeri, another great designer when it comes to wood (comes to mind the sofas made for Arflex with a wooden structure, like the model Strips) we find a small model of her creation “Libreria girevole da tavolo”. A model created by the designer, which in its miniature version displays properly the elegance and grace of the object, thus being preserved in the Ghianda collection.
Other great design names like Marco Zanuso - one of the founders of Arflex together with Carlo Barassi, Renato Teani, Pio Reggiani and Aldo Bai - are present in this wood exposition. Marco Zanuso can be found as a the representative exponent of industrial design, and 9 of his sewing machine models can be seen in the villa’s service room. These machines, designed for the company Necchi between 1961 and 1973, were just one of the very important industrial collaborations in Zanuso’s career. Thanks to the designer’s research together with the companies, more and more optimized products were realized that decade, and slowly they improved the life of the Italians after the second world war. It’s also during this delicate phase that wood had a primary importance in the realization of these products.
Wood often is considered as inferior when compared to other more elegant furnishing materials; but as Pierluigi Ghianda, who dedicated his entire career to wooden object reminds us: “any well-worked material can become precious”. Wood, in its simplicity, is a material capable of transmitting emotions and above all, being a natural material, makes every object it creates unique.
Dome Milano Studio proposes some wooden objects that create a modern and innovative furnishing, using the most primordial material in existence and redesigning it in a modern and elegant version.
Here are some examples:
- The Bond table, designed by Rachele Pellegatta, available in various types of wood: oak, walnut and maple. Bond is presented as a wide table that can be used for different occasions: lunch or dinner with company or even work meetings.
- The auxiliary table Ceppo, designed for Dome by Rachele Pellegatta. This table, which in its name mentions its main material, looks like an original composition of logs, formed by veneered oak. Both the size and the coating are customizable, to make this object extremely versatile and suitable for any ambiance.
- The wooden furniture proposed by Dome continues with the exposition of the Mikado unit by Porro. This refined furnishing object, designed in olive ash, is presented as an oriental-looking and uncommon container. Ideal for all the wood lovers!