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HAVES AND HAVE NOTS: Platform beds (above) and the Fly Candle Fly (below) lighting design by Ingo Maurer were both big hits at the Milan show, but only one of them will be coming to Dallas. Sorry, Harry Potter fans.
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The Market Report
Editor at large Peggy Levinson’s take on the Salone Internazionale del Mobile in Milan.
When I traveled to the Salone Internazionale del Mobile –the largest furniture fair in the world, with 26 multistory buildings of new and traditional furniture designs as well as expositions of new designers– I was most interested in what the Italians are doing in antique reproductions. In the last 25 years I have represented such fine lines as Dessin Fournir, Dennis & Leen, and Rose Tarlow, and I wanted to see how the Italian designs measured up. I know that Dallas antiques importers have bought here, but they must have snapped up the best because what I saw, seven building’s worth, was truly awful. Each showroom had more shine, more shimmer, and more glitz than the last. Oh, the gilt! There was nothing that I would want to import or represent to the Dallas market.
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But then I found what the Italians do best, beautiful and exciting modern furniture. Classic contemporary design tends to push the envelope with multipurpose furniture, and I saw tables that expand, entertainment systems that rotate on a floor-to-ceiling support, even glass shelves with fiber optics that light up as your hand approaches. I was entranced.
In lighting, the Tord Boontje brass garland light for Swarovski was truly astounding; multiple slender branches are adorned with crystalline blossoms and illuminated by LED spots. Ingo Maurer’s Gin & Tonic pendant is just that: gin and tonic in a suspended vessel with an ultraviolet light. And here’s a product for Harry Potter fans. Those candles you’ve seen floating over the banquet tables were not created by Hogwart’s magic, but by Maurer; wire is molded into the candles, which are suspended by invisible thread. The design is aptly named Fly Candle Fly. But don’t look for them in this country; U.S. insurance regulations have made these a no-no.
As for the trends I think might make it over here, I saw orange everywhere, gray-stained oak mixing with rose-garden colors, and platform beds in every opulent finish and configuration. The newest floor-to-ceiling concept will be modeled after the sleek mini-rooms I saw encased in glove leather. Interior doors will come into their own; think hand-carved and -scraped wood with fine finishes and sleek hardware. (Porsche’s slightly convex burl-wood doors are destined to be the next CEO status symbol.) And then there was the use of natural fibers on modern designs.
Local modernistas such as Neal Stewart, David Sutherland, and Jan Showers already know that the overstuffed and oh-so-curvy silhouettes of years past have slimmed down to sleeker profiles, without losing any of the comfort or opulence. Given what I saw in Milan, the trend seems to be continuing in that direction, gloriously so.
