Milan: Part Two

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Milan in mid April can be exquisite – balmy sunshine, budding greenery, spring  in the air and the sap rising. On Wednesday, the opening day,   the sun shone on exhibitors, partygoers, hustlers and hangers, as the Fair got into gear.

 

 

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• Author: Catherine Slessor.

Now that the main showground has decamped to the extreme suburbs, the Zona Tortona, a former industrial quarter in the south of the city is fast becoming the centre of design gravity. Showrooms and exhibition spaces sprout like weeds in all sorts of unlikely places - industrial buildings, car parks, shops, pavements, rooftops, bridges - you name it. Tortona's pre-eminence was sealed with the completion last year of the Nhow Hotel, a mammoth boutique hotel (if that's not a contradiction in terms) set in the shell of an old factory.

The Artek Stand

Nhow is now Tortona's (if not Milan's) febrile, hip epicentre, a cross between  Mission Control and Studio 54. Dropping in for a restorative lunchtime stiffener, your correspondent spotted Dutch designer Marcel Wanders (in gold leather shoes) quaffing champagne and strawberries, two tables away from Karim Rashid sporting a somewhat questionable lime green suit.Milanis like that – designers and architects come to earth, boundaries are dissolved and that vaguely familiar person trying to get past you with a plateful of canapés might be Stefano Dolce or Philippe Starck. You just never know.

But what of the furniture? The gold shod Mr Wanders was on form for Moooi, with an extraordinary carved wood chair and ironic, contemporary riffs on Delft Blue vases. In business since 1653, Royal Delft probably never thought it would come to this, but it's all part of a not-so-subtle movement to épater les bourgeois by cunningly subverting mainstream taste. That carved wood chair, for example, actually looks like moulded plastic.

Away from the manic buzz of Tortona, Established & Sons took their usual berth in an old sports hall originally used for playing pelota. Caruso St John presented an exquisitely minimal table made of lumber board, more usually employed for construction site hoardings, while Sam Hecht's Two Timer clocks wittily merge two time zones in a single clock.

Sam Hecht for Established and Sons

Amid an incessant scrum of parties, launches and cocktail hours, Swarovksi's annual bash on opening night still stands out. Each year a select handful of designers are invited to create a series of bespoke and eye wateringly expensive chandeliers using Swarovksi crystal. This year, the talented young British designer Paul Cocksedge, who began life by transforming crumpled paper cups into light fittings, stole the show with his scintillating 'now-you-see-it-now-you-don't' version of the Mona Lisa. 

Up at the main fairground, you could lose yourself for days in a labyrinth of hangars filled with furniture stands, like some weird parallel universe. Since the move from the old Fiera site in 2006, the trudge factor is now considerable, so design conscious visitors would be advised to confine their attentions to Halls 8 & 12, where the real mano a mano action takes place. Gladiatorial combat is also enjoined by the ever increasing size (and vulgarity) of the stands – Kartell's, for instance, was decked out in what appeared to be fluorescent yellow tartan (as bad as it sounds). But Artek showed that small can be beautiful, and that by simply stacking up Aalto stools, you can create a rather wonderful new kind of partition wall structure.

Caruso St John

As chair fatigue progressively overcomes even the most zealous correspondent, sometimes it's the little things that uplift. Among Vitra's new range was House Bird, a version of the black painted wooden folk art piece from theAppalachian Mountainsacquired by Charles and Ray Eames and reputedly one of their favourite objects. It's a reminder that things can be simple, personal, unpretentious, stand the test of time and still be beautiful. And best of all, no-one knows the name of the original designer.