Terence’s Milan Report 2010

As promised….a report from the man himself

Milan 2010 blog

Unfortunately, as the week progressed the main topic of conversation was not about the design or quality of furniture but about how many hundreds of thousands of visitors were going to escape Milan and find their way home with mainland Europe paralysed by clouds of volcanic dust from Iceland.

No planes, trains fully booked and no hire cars.  The only slightly impractical solution seemed to be horseback or Hannibal’s elephants.

We took the soft option and persuaded our excellent driver Davide in his Audi A6 to take us to a delicious Hotel near Nice called La Colombe d’Or where we stayed for the weekend with classic old school French food, a pool and some sunshine, plus famous pictures and sculpture by Matisse, Calder, Leger, Miro, Utrillo, Braque and many others and warmed the bed reserved for Michael Winner and his fiancée.

The show was good, lots of very thin furniture influenced by the elegant carbon fibre table by Established and Sons from a couple of years ago, taking us back to the 50’s and 60’s.  I remember welding up very spindly furniture made from ½’’ metal rod myself.  Unfortunately there did seem to be lots of gimmicky humorous furniture of not much practical use.  The joke wears thin rather quickly I fear.

However our buyer found an excellent collection of affordable products which will appear on the shop floors over the new few months.

There was an excellent display by Vitra with stylish room sets that looked really liveable alongside beautiful, exquisitely detailed furniture by other leading manufacturers. If you want to talk about trends there was nothing memorable but what was noticeable was how staggeringly expensive everything was, partially the fault of the Euro/Sterling currency situation.

However the outside exhibitions at Ventura Lambrate design district by students from the RCA and Arnhem had real originality and the show at Rossana Orlandi

with lots of exhibits off a cafe courtyard with an upholstered VW Beetle and a flea market of 60’s furniture and elegant shelving from Artek was certainly worth the detour, as was Rinascente’s show of British furniture at their New Design supermarket.

Rolf Sachs’ art show of painted upholstery and light sculpture was certainly extraordinary and exciting, halfway between design and invention and real art for the future.

But will I ever get home or are we destined to spend the summer in the South of France?
I’m already beginning to miss the office.

Thanks to accessorator.com for the photo of the Beetle….