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Tag: gift

Dick Van Hoff

Dick Van Hoff

Dick van Hoff was born in Amsterdam in 1971 and graduated from the Arnhem School of Art in 1996, now based in the east of the Netherlands.
After graduation, he immediately started designing with his name, opening a small studio, which follows the entire evolution of the project, from the first design phase to that of production; in all these years Van Hoff has produced a constant flow of exquisitely made objects.
Through his work as a designer and as professor-tutor at the Design Academy in Eindhoven, Dick van Hoff continues to play an important role in shaping the future of many young Dutch talents and what is called “Droog design thinking”. His promotion of fine craftsmanship coupled with industrial techniques forges a renewed interest in modern standards of form, function and adequacy.
The designer embodies universal values ??in modern products that seem to exist for centuries: functionality, quality and relationship between user and product give strength to projects; you will always sit well on a Dick van Hoff chair, one of his lamps will always impeccably illuminate the desired spot, his leather wood holder will still be among the best existing containers for wood to be placed next to the fireplace … functioning is more important than aesthetics, but this does not mean that form follows function; the designs are present, they are solid and convincing precisely because of their powerful visual language, they are icons that capture the heart.
Often robust in form, but subtly detailed, they are timeless objects, where their presence is obvious, their place in the house as logical and pleasant as a good friend.
Industrial customization guarantees an intact and penetrating way of production in which the quality, finish and choice of materials are fundamental; the designs are made with love: love for the product, the decision-making process, the user and the profession. Whether the design is produced industrially or manually, perfection and craftsmanship are always very visible.
Dick van Hoff’s work is represented in the permanent collection of the Boymans van Beuningen in Rotterdam, the Fond National d’Art Contemporaine, in Paris and the Centraal Museum in Utrech.

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Davide Medri

Davide Medri

Davide Medri was born in Cesena on August 7, 1967 and graduated from the Fine Arts of Ravenna, the Mosaic Art Institute and the Albestainer Mosaic Professional School, considered one of the best schools in the world for teaching the mosaic technique.

After various artistic experiences and in the world of design, in 1997 the designer began the production of mirror mosaics, entirely handmade with extreme meticulousness. Immediately these highly decorative objects, the result of an aesthetic marked at times maximalist, become design icons, desired all over the world; the shapes are manifold, united or broken down to form different compositions, square or curved, in natural mirror, gold or black glass for an always very spectacular effect.

The work is totally handmade and every single piece of glass is fixed by hand ensuring high quality; each work of art and design is unique.

Parallel to the mirrors, panels and large frames, the designer also creates tables, coffee tables, consoles and lamps with the same characteristics, combining stainless steel with the glass or mirror mosaic, in a pleasant play of glossy-opaque and clear- dark. Among these furnishings we can mention the conical tables with mosaic interior illuminated by light, the long steel table with mosaic inserts and the famous lamps that can be combined with rings in a luminous mirror mosaic.

Many years after their first appearance, the mirrors and their grandiose frames remain the most ingenious, original and recognized product of Davide Medri, now called “the king of the mirror mosaic”. In more recent years, a new ironic and very decorative collection has been added to the famous type of mosaic mirrors, consisting of large mirrors with the enlarged appearance of real or imaginary road signs. This apparently playful collection must not be misleading: each specimen is made entirely by hand, painting, as on a painting, the road sign with its related symbols and colors.

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Boda Horak

Boda Horak

Boda Horak

Boda Horak completed her architecture and interior design studies at the College of Art, Architecture and Design in Prague, where she graduated in 1980 and a few years later, in 1987, was one of the co-founders of the legendary group of designers “ATIKA”, much acclaimed by critics and audiences; very soon he became one of the main European exponents of that recognized as the post-modernist movement of the 1980s. According to many critics, while in Italy the Memphis movement with Ettore Sottsass and his other collaborators manifested itself in Prague, following an ideological and aesthetic path very similar, the figure of this designer was highlighted.
His works, characterized by impeccable craftsmanship and a very thick plastic sense, are of very different types and sizes: from the glass to the candlestick, from the chairs to the sofa. All these pieces are characterized by a very strong aesthetic, at times monumental and dramatic, always of great impact and out of the usual design paths,
From 1993 the artist began to collaborate with the German company Anthologie Quartett, who first sensed his great talent, creating a successful line of design products that helped define the same distinctive style of the company. Horak’s designs are all unique, never the same, sculptural, but attentive to use, ergonomics and practicality: what seem to be precious sculptures, turn out to be very comfortable chairs or perfectly usable sofas.
In 2012 the designer started a new project, working together with the designer glass sculptor Vladimíra Klumpar and creating a collection of highly refined objects, including vases, candelabra and glasses. This is followed by a new line of lighting objects, which includes monumental chandeliers, but also small lamps with a great atmosphere.
In the same year Boda Horak began collaborating with Rückl crystal glass companies A.S, Bomma, PRAGER Kunstsalon and from 2013 with some art galleries: the KREHKY gallery, PRAGA KABINET and TIME ART AVANTGARDESIGN in Germany.
Boda Horak participates in prestigious exhibitions in some famous international galleries such as Binnen in Amsterdam, Jannone in Milan, Ferrero1947 in Turin, dadriade in Rome, the Moss Gallery in New York, the Limn gallery in San Francisco, UNICA Las Vegas, etc … works are regularly published at home and abroad, in many art magazines and books and are also exhibited in the most famous design and applied art museums in the world and in some private collections.

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Christien Meindertsma

Christien Meindertsma

Christien Meindertsma

Christien Meindertsma was born in Utrecht in 1980 and graduated from the prestigious Eindhoven Design Academy in 2003; his work explores the life of products and raw materials in depth. In some cases, the result of his projects could be the recording of a process itself, in others, his investigations lead to commercial products; careful investigations and documentation, issues of local production and underexposed resources characterize his work.

The designer tries to reveal the processes that have become distant in industrialization and encourage a deeper understanding of the materials and products that surround us. His first work was a 2004 book called Checked Baggage, where Meindertsma purchased a container filled with a week of items confiscated at Schiphol airport security checks, meticulously classified and photographed, reaching 3267 items. Later, his 2007 PIG 05049 book documented all products made with a single pig, exploring the connection between raw materials and everyday products that surround us, revealing a network between source and consumer that has become increasingly invisible.

Another documentary project called Bottom Ash Observatory in 2015 involved Meindertsma in sifting a bucket of Bottom Ash incinerator, an abundant and until recently devalued by-product of the large-scale incineration of household waste, to reveal and present the precious materials to the ‘internal; this project came together in a precious book and a limited edition series of images.

Works such as the 2012 Flax Project, and its many offspring, are also typical of his approach: Meindertsma purchased an entire crop of a Dutch flax grower with the ambition to explore how flax products could remain locally produced ; the result is an extraordinary collection of objects such as lamps, rugs, poufs, chairs, fabrics … made solely with this batch of Dutch linen, the same used for the tops in the port of Rotterdam.

Many Dutch scholars and politicians therefore invited Christien Meindertsma to transform his particularly investigative method of design and documentation on a specific topic, exploring far-reaching topics such as Forestry in the Flevopolder region of the Netherlands, the relationship between Japanese porcelain and Dutch linen and the landscape of northern Canada. The designer’s work is in the collection of the MOMA in New York, the Victoria & Albert Museum in London and the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rein. Among the numerous prizes and awards: three Dutch Design Awards in 2008 and an Index Index in 2009 for the PIG 05049 project; the Flax chair won the Dutch Design Award and Future Award in 2016.

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bcxsy

BCXSY

BCXSY

BCXSY is an interdisciplinary studio based in Amsterdam between the designers Boaz Cohen, born in Israel in 1978) and Sayaka Yamamoto, born in Japan, in 1984. The studio, founded in early 2007, continues to carry out a wide range of projects , both in the Netherlands and abroad, offering a balanced combination of two unique talents and providing a narrative that is characterized by the emphasis on personal experience, human interaction and emotional awareness. The clever interweaving of the particular and craftsmanship with the universal and commercial is the hallmark of the BCXSY design experience.
In recent years, BCXSY has gained international notoriety and recognition for their dedication to socially sensitive projects. Their award-winning work has been featured in some of the world’s most prestigious design events and continues to capture the attention of international galleries and museums, including the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, the Shanghai Glass Museum, the Textielmuseum in Tilburg, the Netherlands.
With an approach that is deliberately playful, BCXSY never fails to surprise and inspire. Thanks to the collaboration with a series of craft workshops and commercial initiatives, BCXSY creates products that are a fusion of context and beauty. All the projects are limited edition of a few specimens, to preserve that uniqueness obtained thanks to a rigorous creative process combined with a very high level of craftsmanship.
Through their constant participation in international workshops and conferences, the studio has become a leader in the most recent design and debate forum. The two partners bring spirit, purity and uniqueness to the modern design community and continue to carve out their place among the today’s most influential designs.

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Atelier Van Lieshout

Atelier Van Lieshout

Atelier Van Lieshout

Atelier Van Lieshout is the studio founded by the sculptor, painter and visionary Joep van Lieshout, who, after graduating from the Rotterdam Art Academy, quickly became famous with projects that oscillate between the world of design and that of art: sculpture and installations, buildings and furniture, utopias and dystopias. In 1995, Van Lieshout founded his studio and since then he has worked exclusively with the name of the studio, which includes more than twenty collaborators of different origins and backgrounds. They all work together in a large shed on the port of Rotterdam, divided into several departments: fiberglass, wood sculpture, metal. The designers are closely involved in the manufacturing process of each product; for this reason, the design and production of all the works signed by AVL must necessarily take place in this single place.
Over the past three decades, Van Lieshout has established a multidisciplinary practice that produces works on the borders between art, design and architecture, studying the fine line between manufacturing art and functional mass production objects and trying to find the borders between fantasy and function, between fertility and destruction.
Van Lieshout analyzes systems, be it society as a whole or the human body; he experiments, looks for alternatives, holds exhibitions such as experiments for recycling and even declared an independent state in the port of Rotterdam AVL-Ville in 2001: a free state in the port of Rotterdam, with a minimum of rules, a maximum of freedom and the higher degree of autarky.
All these activities are carried out in the typical provocative style of Van Lieshout, be it political or material, combining imaginative aesthetics and ethics with a great entrepreneurial spirit; his work motivated the movements in the field of architecture and ecology and was celebrated, exhibited and published internationally. His works share a series of recurring themes, motives and obsessions: systems, power, autarchy, life, sex and death – each of these traces the human individual in front of a larger whole like his well-known work Domestikator (2015) . This sculpture aroused controversy before it was even placed in the Louvre in the Jardin de Tuilleries, but was later adopted by the Center Pompidou where it was exhibited during the 2017 FiAC.

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Memphis-Milano: il fenomeno culturale degli anni '80

Memphis-Milano

Memphis-Milan is the great cultural phenomenon of the 1980s that revolutionized creative and commercial logic in design. Born in Milan in 1980 from the idea of ??Ettore Sottsass and a group of young designers and architects, who over the years have become famous designers on the international scene, Memphis has overturned all the existing parameters, precisely because his goal was to break the status quo of the design industry.

According to legend Ettore Sottsass was in his Milan apartment with a group of young designers, including the radical Michele De Lucchi, to discuss how design had become bourgeois and irrelevant by now … meanwhile we listened to Bob Dylan’s song by 1966 “Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again”. As a group, he decided at this precise moment to come together in a collective and to create a completely new collection, full of life and in step with the times, calling it Memphis.

Over the years many young designers passed through the collective, coming from different countries and cultures and all bringing their personal contribution in the context of a common manifesto; among them Martine Bedin, Andrea Branzi; Aldo Cibic, Michel Graves, Nathalie du Pasquier, Peter Shire, Javier Mariscal, George Sowden, Alessandro Mendini, Matteo Thun, Masanori Umeda, Arata Isozaki, Shiro Kuramata, Marco Zanuso jr and many others. To all of them, and to the supervision of Ettore Sottsass himself, we owe the most interesting projects of the Memphis group.

Memphis has imposed new shapes, new materials and new motifs on design. A first collection was born in 1981 with the financial support of Ettore Gismondi, president of Artemide, and immediately has an explosive effect: bright colors, an abundance of decorations, courageous asymmetries, totemic vertical furniture … nothing like this has ever been seen, catapulting the design in the extravagant and colorful universe of cinema, comics and pop art, to which the collective looks with interest and respect.

The objects of Memphis, produced in limited series, try to escape the banality of everyday life, taking up names that arouse an imaginary world in each of us, with a strong surprise effect thanks to the shapes and materials used, especially the decorative laminates of the Piedmontese society laminated Bra Abet, but also the Venetian ceramics and glass for the beautiful Sottsass vases, made according to the ancient techniques of the Venetian glass masters.

Among the most iconic pieces of the collection we can mention the colorful Carlton bookcase, the Tahiti lamp, the Totem Casablanca furniture, all designed by Ettore Sottsass, the Oceanic lamp and the first chair by Michele De Lucchi. the Oberoi armchairs and the lamp on wheels Super Lamp by Martine Bedin, the Palace chair by George Sowden and many other projects including furnishings, rugs (extraordinary those of Nathalie du Pasquier), ceramics, glass, silver, lamps, fabrics … all unscrupulous, colorful, brave and unconventional.

Memphis has become a symbol of New Design; its influence has been immense in the history of design and is still very strong in various sectors of production and beyond: its aesthetic has been taken up and embraced in various artistic fields in recent years.

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