Waiting for Salone 2024: design reissues

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Exteta, Locus Solus Pouf, design by Gae Aulenti

The enduring fascination of the creations of the Masters of the past in the offerings of the great design and furniture brands

Gio Ponti, Mario Bellini, Vico Magistretti, Gianfranco Frattini, Gae Aulenti, Piero Portaluppi. Great talents who have made their mark in the history of design with their creations, which have now become timeless classics. With a sort of retrospective gaze, it is precisely the most firmly established and innovative companies that are paying homage to the geniuses of the past, reinventing their creations with a contemporary taste and reinterpreting them by drawing on cutting-edge technologies.

In an imaginary and certainly not exhaustive journey through time, we start with the PP33 handle from Mandelli1953, a reissue of the one created by Portaluppi in 1933, which can be seen in Villa Necchi Campiglio, and the Maestro table by Acerbis, reinterpreted in textured woods that make it more spectacular.

The Piccy armchairs in wood and canvas by Vico Magistretti, exhibited in 1946 at Palazzo dell’Arte in Milan, are another important page in the history of design: today they are in the Campeggi catalogue.

Ignazio Gardella displayed revolutionary insight in his project Elegie (1949), reproduced by Misuraemme, perhaps the first to introduce and epitomize the concepts of modular and sectional design, as well as the ergonomics of the Code chair from Emu, a best-selling reissue of a classic designed by EMU D&S Lab.

The maiolica tiles that Gio Ponti made to pave the hall and the hundred rooms of the Hotel Parco dei Principi in Sorrento between 1960 and 1962 relive in splendour in the hand-painted colors of the Ceramiche Francesco De Maio, chosen by the heirs of the Master as the exclusive worldwide licensee for their reissue.

Also from the sixties is the Locus Solus pouf, designed by the always surprising Gae Aulenti (1964), now emphasized in its playfulness as originally devised by the designer with original and innovative patterns from Exteta.

Equally surprising are the new chrome finishes designed by I4Mariani for the 50th anniversary of the Tucroma chair by the architect Guido Faleschini (1971), or the modularity of Mario Bellini’s Le Mura sofa, revisited by Tacchini Italia Forniture, a veritable manifesto of the radical design in fashion in those years.

Our tour ends with Molinari Design, which reinterprets a great hit of the 90s: the Fat Boy sofa.