| BERNINI / MILAN INTERNATIONAL FURNITURE FAIR 2006 |
In the history of Italian design, Bernini is a unique and extraordinary experience which draws its strength directly from the roots of "good wood processing" in the northern Italian region of Lombardy ever since the fifteenth century. An attitude and availability which has produced a number of outstanding designing and producing realities that today can be found in the museums and collections all around the world.
In 1967 the Bernini company took part in the Salon du Meuble de Paris with a stand, designed by Joe Colombo, built in tubular elements progressively bent in sequence, creating a fan effect.
Today at the Milan International Furniture Fair Bernini reproposes it in order to present other works by Joe Colombo on the basis of original designs of the era.
The Book Box is an item that belongs to the series of Personal Containers designed in 1964 and which, set aside others, can make up wall-mounted or central bookcases in various modular compositions.
The Living Bed is a bed with a reclining headboard and a footboard with a bridge structure that slides on wheels. Both allow the bed to be covered with flat surfaces for placing objects or sitting on during the day. A prototype of this bed was presented in 1971 at the La mia casa exhibition in Turin. The version presented now represents the evolution that Joe Colombo came up with in order to solve the problems inherent in overall occupation of space that the prototype for La mia casa highlighted.
In contrast, the Bell Chair armchair, made in curved plywood and with a wrap-around form set off by intaglio carvings in the base and seat, cannot be traced back to any known design. It was thought up and immediately committed to paper in 1963 through the usual marvellous freehand drawings of Joe Colombo. His drawing skills are, as a matter of fact, legendary. This model was not possible to produce in Joe Colombo's time because of difficulties in implementing the design, as then unsolved. Technological advances made with regard to working curved plywood over the years makes it possible to manufacture today.
Noriyuki Ebina is a Japanese architect who had been seeking a producer for his Strider Chair somewhere in the world. As his project was aimed at the virtuosi of woodworking technology, he could not but propose it to Bernini who, in turn, could not but take it into consideration.
The inspiration comes from the bookcase of the series entitled Luigi o mi amate voi? designed in 1982 by Gaetano Pesce for Bernini. While tidying up the basement of his house in New York, Gaetano Pesce came across the original product. Appreciating once more the quality of the project, which he had somehow forgotten about, he decided to set to work on it again, radically overhauling dimensions, materials and finish, creating, in short, something new... Hence the name Luigi Nuovo.
In 2006 will mark the centenary of the birth of Carlo Scarpa. For the occasion, Bernini has asked the designer's son, Tobia Scarpa, to come up with a new design for it. His choice fell upon a table designed by Carlo Scarpa back in 1937 with a tubular steel structure, from which the name Tola derives (in Venetian dialect in fact tola means table).
The Carega chair by Tobia Scarpa is a tribute to his father Carlo. It recaptures the upholstered seat, albeit lacking the cushion and the back of the seat from the "1934" collection designed in that very year by Carlo Scarpa and produced by Bernini ever since 1977. Tobia has completely changed its structure from the model designed by his father, replacing wood with metal so as to make the Carega compatible with the Tola.
About the past collections Bernini we remember:
Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni with Sanluca armchair;
Lella and Massimo Vinelli with Incontro armchair;
Joe Colombo with the storical Torre Combi Center;
M. Marconato and T. Zappa with Riga chair;
Pier Federico Caliari and A. Arnaldi with Amerique table;
Naghi Habib with his table Flaps;
Franco Poli
with the Serie 0+1
- Bookshelves
and Chairs
-, the Scaligera
container, the X.12
system, and Romeo
and Giulietta - table and armchair;
Carlo Scarpa
with Zibaldone bookcase;
the Serie 1934 chair,
the Serie 1935 bookcase and also the modern Kentucky chair;
Gaetano Pesce with the coloured and famous 543 Broadway chair;
Finally the Japanese designer Toshiyuky Kita with the Su misura table.
Bernini
Via Milano 8
20020 Ceriano Laghetto (Mi) Italy
Tel +39 02 96469293
Fax +39 02 96469646
www.bernini.it
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