Mobilia Journal Issue Three: March 2025

ISSUE THREE

THE ARTISAN ISSUE

MARCH 2025

MICHAEL ANASTASSIADES FINDS POETRY IN INDUSTRY • AN EXPLORATION OF ARTISANAL CRAFTSMANSHIP IN ITALIAN FURNITURE DESIGN FROM THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY TO TODAY • FAYE TOOGOOD SINGS TO HER OWN BRILLIANT TUNE • ALESSANDRO SARFATTI ON MERGING DESIGN, TECHNOLOGY AND SUSTAINABILITY TO EMBRACE THE NEW WITH REVERENCE FOR THE PAST • PLUS: POLTRONA FRAU PUSHES THE BOUNDARIES OF AESTHETICS AND PERFORMANCE IN LEATHER

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04 NEWS: A NOTE FROM MOBILIA 06 NOW: MICHAEL ANASTASSIADES: POETRY IN INDUSTRY BY ROSA BERTOLI 14 THEN: CRAFTING ITALIAN FURNITURE BY PENNY CRASWELL 18 CONVERSATION: FAYE TOOGOOD: BREAKING BARRIERS BY FIONA MCCARTHY 22 PERSPECTIVE: A LEGACY OF LIGHT:

BY ALESSANDRO SARFATTI 26 CONVERSATION: ATELIER ALWILL: THE POWER OF STORYTELLING BY HAYLEY TILLETT 32 PRODUCT: INSULA: AN ‘ISLAND OF COMFORT’ TO GATHER BY HAYLEY TILLETT 36 PROJECT: LITTLEWOOD RESIDENCE BY GOLDEN & INFORM BY BRONWYN MARSHALL 46 PRODUCT: KNOTS OF HISTORY: A RUG SURVEY 50 INSIGHT: LEATHER REIMAGINED BY ROSAMUND BRENNAN 53 PLAY: ROOM FOR GAMES 54 POSTCARDS: THINGS THAT GO TOGETHER FROM MICHAEL ANASTASSIADES

COVER ARTWORK: ONE WELLKNOWN SEQUENCE BY MICHAEL ANASTASSIADES. ART DIRECTION: SAM FAZZARI DESIGNER: BEC STAWELL WILSON EDITOR: SARAH LANGLEY ALESSANDRO SARFATTI IS A THIRD-GENERATION LIGHTING VISIONARY DRIVEN BY A PASSION FOR INNOVATION AND REDEFINING DESIGN THROUGH CUTTING -EDGE IDEAS AND TECHNOLOGY. BRONWYN MARSHALL IS A WRITER, ARCHITECT, DESIGNER AND EDUCATOR WHOSE WORK HAS APPEARED IN PUBLICATIONS INCLUDING DOMUS, ELLE DÉCOR AND HOUSES. FIONA MCCARTHY IS A PERTHBORN, LONDON-BASED LIFESTYLE JOURNALIST, CONTRIBUTING EDITOR AND AUTHOR WHO WRITES FOR LEADING PUBLICATIONS AROUND THE WORLD. SHE IS ALSO THE LONDON EDITOR FOR VOGUE LIVING. HAYLEY TILLETT IS A MELBOURNEBASED WRITER AND DESIGNER SPECIALISING IN ARCHITECTURE, INTERIORS, AND DESIGN. WITH A BACKGROUND IN ACADEMIA AND PRACTICE, SHE EXPLORES THE INTERSECTIONS OF DESIGN, COMMUNICATION, BRAND STORYTELLING AND STRATEGY. PENNY CRASWELL IS THE AUTHOR OF THE NEW SUSTAINABLE HOUSE (2024), RECLAIMED: NEW HOMES FROM OLD MATERIALS (2022) AND DESIGN LIVES HERE (2020).

ROSA BERTOLI WAS BORN IN UDINE, ITALY, AND NOW LIVES IN LONDON. SHE IS THE GLOBAL DESIGN DIRECTOR OF WALLPAPER* AND HAS COAUTHORED TWO BOOKS PUBLISHED

BY HOXTON MINI PRESS. ROSAMUND BRENNAN IS AN AUSTRALIAN JOURNALIST DRIVEN

BY AN ENDLESS CURIOSITY FOR CREATIVITY AND CULTURE. WE ACKNOWLEDGE THE TRADITIONAL OWNERS AND CUSTODIANS OF THE LANDS ON WHICH WE LIVE AND WORK, AND WE PAY OUR RESPECT TO ELDERS PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE. JOIN THE DOTS: CAB CHAIR CROSSWORD SOLUTIONS DOWN: 2 HORSEHAIR, 3 BONNARD, 4 MAJLIS, 5 ALFA, 7 OZWALD, 8 WOOD, 11 MASERATI, 12 FRAU, 13 BARCELONA, 16 PONTI, 17 GINO, 19 EDEN, 20 ICONS

Top-Bottom: Michael Anastassiades by Eirini Vourloumis, Alessandro Sarfatti by Ditlev Rosing, Faye Toogood by Genevieve Lutkin.

CROSSWORD SOLUTIONS ACROSS: 1 ARCHIBALD, 4 MEDA, 6 POLTRONA, 9 ANTONIO, 10 HANDMADE, 14 ARTISAN, 15 FAIR, 17 GIO, 18 FERRARI, 21 CAB, 22 TOLENTINO, 23 CASSINA

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CONTENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS

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A Note From Mobilia

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Mobilia Journal is the culmination of a long story, and the beginning of a new one; it’s a place to share the conversations, perspectives and insights gathered through our work with the world’s brightest design and creative minds.

News From Mobilia

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IN LLET U B OM WRO O H S

Mobilia’s Sydney showroom.

I have fond memories of my father building furniture as I grew up, watching his craftsmanship, running through the workshop and marvelling at the pieces he created. Even as a child, I knew I wanted to follow in his footsteps. When I got older, I did just that, working alongside him to create beautiful, custom-designed furniture. That experience ignited my passion for design and craftsmanship.

When I was 21, I joined my brother Sam, the founding director of Mobilia, taking my first steps into the world of designer furniture.

It wasn’t until I attended the Salone del Mobile in 2014 that my perspective truly expanded. That event deepened my appreciation for design and opened my eyes to a world that felt both exciting and familiar. I realised that many of the most iconic design companies had started in small workshops, driven purely by a love for their craft just like my father’s. That connection resonated deeply with me.

As I immersed myself in these brands’ histories, I knew I wanted to be part of something bigger, something that not only celebrated the artistry of furniture making from conception to completion but also brought these incredible pieces into people’s homes, where they would become part of their own stories and memories.

I had discovered a world that was both constantly evolving and deeply rooted in history. New ideas and innovations seemed to emerge at lightning speed, yet every piece of furniture also carried a timeless quality, a history that goes back to its first sketches. As I explored more, I found myself captivated by the evolution of design and inspired by the legacy of great designers such as Gio Ponti, Gaetano Pesce, Franco Albini, Carlo Scarpa, and Vico Magistretti, as well as the skilled artisans who helped bring their designs to life.

Beyond the Salone, another turning point for me was meeting my design idols. It is particularly fitting, then, that this issue of Mobilia Journal features Michael Anastassiades, who I have always admired as an exceptional modern thinker. Rosa Bertoli’s profile of Michael sheds light on the poetry and precision he imbues in his work, spanning product, spatial interventions and experimental works..

On the topic of lighting, we also hear from Alessandro Sarfatti, who reflects on his early memories of his grandfather, Gino Sarfatti, one of the most significant figures in 20th century design and how he has built upon his family’s legacy through his company, Astep.

Among other highlights, Penny Craswell explores the history of artisan craft in Italian furniture design, with insights from Cassina, Poltrona Frau and Moroso. These storied design companies continue to celebrate the maker’s touch, combining traditional craftsmanship with industrial production methods.

Meanwhile, Fiona McCarthy sits down in London with British designer Faye Toogood to discuss a range of topics, from being nominated as Maison&Objet’s 2025 Designer of the Year to her WOMANIFESTO! installation and her recent collaboration with Poltrona Frau. Closer to home, Hayley Tillett speaks with Romy Alwill, the creative force behind Sydney-based interior design practice Atelier Alwill, offering a fascinating look at her approach and the role of furniture curation in her work.

This issue also marks an exciting milestone for

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Relay 1.6 floor lamp designed by Michael Anastassiades (2022).

Faye Toogood for A Squashed Space, a bold installation at Poltrona Frau’s flagship London store celebrating the Squash collection last year. Photography: Courtesy of Toogood.

Cornaro armchair designed by Carlo Scarpa and produced by Cassina (1973/2024). Photography: Luca Merli.

Mobilia Makes Sydney Home Mobilia’s Sydney showroom is now open at 25 Bourke Road, Alexandria. The new space is part of the latest development

by Time and Place, designed by the internationally acclaimed Wardle studio, with Flack Studio responsible for the interiors. The development is recognised as the most ambitious and forward-thinking building in the area, setting a new standard for modern architectural design.

The interiors of Mobilia’s showroom were once again designed by Melbourne-based studio GOLDEN. The design represents a progressive approach to furniture retail, combining a series of distinct mono-brand spaces woven into the architectural shell. Spanning over three tenancies, Mobilia’s Sydney showroom is its largest store, housing exclusive brands such as Cassina, Poltrona Frau, Moroso, CC-Tapis, Kettal and more.

Mobilia—the opening of our new Sydney showroom.

More than just an expansion, it’s an opportunity to share our passion for beautifully crafted, high-quality furniture with a broader audience. We take pride in curating unique pieces that elevate living spaces and can’t wait to bring that experience to Sydney. As we grow, our mission remains the same: to create inspiring spaces where design enthusiasts and furniture aficionados can explore, discover, and bring their visions to life. The journey ahead is exhilarating, and we’re just getting started.

This issue is dedicated to my brother Sam, who has been my mentor from the very beginning. You have always shown me support, love and perseverance and taught me that everything starts with believing in yourself.

Visit Mobilia’s new Sydney showroom located at 25 Bourke Road, Alexandria.

VL50 Awards Presented by Mobilia Mobilia is proud to once again support Vogue Living’s prestigious VL50 awards following the inaugural event last year. With 10 awards honouring established and emerging practices in the fields of product design, landscape design, interior design, art and architecture, the awards reflect Australia’s talented, dynamic and inspiring design community.

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Cassina reintroduces modernist architect Carlo Scarpa’s sculptural 1973 furniture design, Cornaro. Defined by structural and material contrasts, Cornaro’s geometric wooden base encases padded elements that form the backrest, seat, and armrests. Cassina has updated the sofa’s proportions, increasing their height and depth, through extensive research in close collaboration with Tobia Scarpa, the son of Carlo Scarpa. In addition to the sofa, Cornaro is also available as an armchair or a two- or three-seat end element.

View the Cornaro collection at mobilia.com.au.

Past Meets Present: Poltrona Frau’s Squash Collection

by Faye Toogood The Squash collection is British designer Faye Toogood’s first collaboration with Poltrona Frau. Starting with a trip to the historic Italian company’s factory and archive in Tolentino, Italy, Toogood was drawn to the company’s bold 1970s silhouettes and the iconic Vanity Fair armchair in lipstick red, an emblem of Poltrona Frau. These pieces formed the genesis of the Squash armchair, combining Poltrona Frau’s distinctive colours and leather expertise with contemporary shapes and generous contours. The result is a collection of seating, mirrors and a rug that combines the past and present to create a new vision for the future.

The VL50 award winners will feature in the May/June edition of Vogue Living.

View the Squash collection in-store at Mobilia showrooms or online at mobilia.com.au. Read more about Faye Toogood in an interview with Fiona McCarthy on pages 18 - 21.

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Patricia Urquiola at Mobilia’s Design Circus event at the National Gallery of Victoria last year.

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Design Evolution: Cassina’s Cornaro Collection by Carlo Scarpa

Design Circus Returns The 10th anniversary of the Design Circus in 2024 was a huge success raising over $35,000 for ToyBox Australia, a charity dedicated to supporting sick and disadvantaged children. The highly lauded international designer Patricia Urquiola was the exclusive special guest speaker for the Melbourne and Perth events, both of which sold out in record time. Held at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, and Heath Ledger Theatre in Perth, Urquiola spoke passionately about her incredible design philosophy and creative process. This year, Design Circus returns with an exciting new guest, Michael Anastassiades. The Cypriot-born, London-based designer is known for his lighting, furniture and objects that distil a rich set of diverse references into pure, simple forms. For this special edition of Design Circus, Anastassiades will take to the stage to share insights into his creative process, design philosophy and expansive body of work. Held at the prestigious NGV, Design Circus continues its mission of fostering global conversations while supporting charitable causes, bringing the community together through the power of design.

Read more about Michael Anastassiades in an interview with Rosa Bertoli on pages 6 - 11.

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Michael Anastassiades: Poetry in Industry LI ERTO B A ROS NOW

Peak Up pendant by Michael Anastassiades (2023). Photography: Alexandros Pissourios.

A wizard of lighting design, Michael Anastassiades has established a design language that merges a poetic outlook with rigorous precision.

In contemporary lighting design, Michael Anastassiades is a magician. Using the simplest forms, he can create objects that illuminate a space through an essential language, giving new meaning and shape to an ancient gesture. His work possesses a sense of perfection, balance and poetry that has so far been unmatched. And while he is best known for his lighting works, which he creates both as part of his eponymous brand and for leading Italian lighting brand Flos, he also creates for the likes of Cassina, Kettal, Alessi, Molteni & C and more, ranging from furniture to small household objects.

Originally from Cyprus, Anastassiades moved to London to study civil engineering at the Imperial College, later gaining a masters degree in industrial design at the Royal College of Art. Given this double background, one would be forgiven for searching through his work for clues of his training: impossibly precise proportions and sense of balance suggest an engineer’s mind is behind the structures, but at the same time, each piece slightly breaks the rules of that precision and balance. This way to illuminate a space while instilling curiosity is the result of a deeper sense of composition and taste. “I’m sure the engineer is still in me when I design,” he says. “I always strive for precision even if there’s a last layer of unpredictability in the end product.

Striving for perfection is just a means to establish the discipline and commitment to the practice.”

The early works of his career couldn’t be more different from the essential, sophisticated pieces he is now best known for, instead showing an experimental approach that set the foundation for a practice that he has perfected and finessed over time. His Michael Anastassiades projects give a glimpse into a preoccupation with how objects can reflect the relationships between people and objects. Objects like the Message Cup and the Antisocial Light, from 1993 and 2001 respectively, used a rudimentary technology that nodded to what was to come, a way to explore how people communicate. Both these concepts relied on user behaviour to function: made of laminated birch ply in an essential shape, the Message Cup featured a portable voice recording and playback device, with the idea that each person in a home has their own cup for other people to record a message (something that is simply done by turning the cup upside down). The Antisocial Light, meanwhile, will only turn on if there is silence in a room—any voices or background noise causing it to dim and switch off.

For a few years Anastassiades’ work continued to straddle the theoretical and the abstract, using research and collaboration to investigate ideas and concepts. Earlier in his career, he collaborated with speculative design studio Dunne and Raby on collections that gave a psychological reading to household objects, touching upon themes that included our relationship with plants and nuclear anxiety.

Design, intended as a means to a functional object, came later, as he was building his London home and couldn’t source objects he liked.

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Michael Anastassiades by Eirini Vourloumis.

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The first lighting design he produced under the Michael Anastassiades aegis, came in 2006: the Tube Chandelier featured three tubes of lights held by a central brass structure. “The design for this fixture began as an exercise of subtraction,” he explained. ‘The challenge was to suspend the minimum number of incandescent light tubes in a sculptural configuration to form a vertical chandelier.

The supports needed to be discreet so when lit, only three glowing lines would be seen.’

Over the years, the collection has grown with designs that have expanded the aesthetic scope of his work while still working on the concept of subtraction. The designs are so restrained they embody the essential idea of light yet possess a refinement that no designer has been able to achieve.

His visual language stems from a basic grammar: tubular lights and opaline glass spheres, polished brass volumes and black patinated rods, which are placed in a conversation based on equilibrium and elegance. “I focus on simplicity. I start the design process by gradually removing layers of information that are not necessary,” he explains.

“It’s a distillation process through which I eventually reach a point where there’s no other layer to remove as the object stops to exist. The remaining visual language is there as a reminder. I don’t claim to own the process or the result but I’m consistent with the process.”

Perhaps one of the best examples of Anastassiades’ brilliance, his design intuition and the humour that often emerges from his work, is the Tip of the Tongue light: a collection from 2013 comprising table, wall and ceiling lights featuring a sphere that appears to roll down the edge of a solid polished brass base. “This delicate gesture of a sphere poised on the edge of the surface evokes the familiar phenomenon of failing to retrieve a word from memory, expressing a moment of tension in the form of the design.”

These themes have been expanded through his work with Italian lighting design brand Flos, for whom Anastassiades regularly creates lighting objects that have included portable and rechargeable table lamps and a track system inspired by the electric slot cars circuits he played with as a child. “My collaboration with other brands helps me explore my ideas in industrial production that would otherwise not be possible through the small scale of my own brand,” he says. “Even through my collaboration with Flos I tend to focus on ideas that are only feasible on a larger scale.”

The wider design industry also took notice of Anastassiades’ talents early on, and his portfolio stretches way beyond lighting. For Spanish outdoor furniture specialist Kettal, he has designed furniture and, curiously, a ceiling fan that blends his distinctive approach to silhouettes to the extreme of functionality. His tables and chairs for Italian giants like Cassina and Molteni & C feature angled and folded shapes that once again make the most of a minimal gesture.

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The Floating Forest by Michael Anastassiades consists of seven different models to be positioned over a drinking glass, each designed for a specific seed or stone.

“The [Michael Anastassiades] designs are so restrained they embody the essential idea of light yet possess a refinement that no designer has been able to achieve.”

The Mobile Chandeliers (above) by Michael Anastassiades are delicate structures balanced in perfect equilibrium. Constructed following the principles of a mobile, these are arrangements of linear tubes, geometric light sources, reflective surfaces and counterbalancing weights. The pieces rotate freely and delicately, creating an ever-changing lighting configuration unique to the space they occupy.

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For a designer so embedded in the industrial aspect of his work, Anastassiades is also deeply rooted in the craft of design. “I work in industrial production and most of the time this involves the use of machinery; it is a process which usually makes things appear identical,” he concedes. “However, this appearance becomes less obvious as the layer of hand finishing comes into the process. It’s only through close observation that one starts noticing the difference but it’s that precise level of imperfection that makes each piece unique in its kind.” He admits that while his work on an object might end when someone buys it, he doesn’t consider it complete and each design keeps evolving with time. “Time is also allowed in, the objects are never finished with protective lacquers. Their last layer of appearance is constantly changing.”

Existing on the cusp of industry and culture, Anastassiades’ work is often shown in a context that eschews from its functional roots. In 2013, he was invited by Swedish heritage brand Svenskt Tenn to stage a homage to founder Josef Frank. To Be Perfectly Frank featured Anastassiades’ take on Svenskt Tenn classics as well as new objects and furniture inspired by its history, including a wooden display cabinet and a vase to suspend a seed over water to let it grow—an object that has since become a cult for design aficionados. In 2014, he curated a solo retrospective of his work at the Point Centre for Contemporary Art in his native

Cyprus, while in his Cheerfully optimistic about the Future display at Milan’s Fondazione ICA in 2021 included a series of found objects, carefully laid out, that gave a glimpse into Anastassiades’ visual inspirations.

Light remains the focal point of his practice, and his ongoing preoccupation. “The biggest influence in my work is the way that light exists in nature,” he adds. “These ways are infinite as they are created by a complex matrix of different factors. As a lighting designer, I consider myself lucky if I would be able to capture a moment of that poetry.”

Exhibition view of Cheerfully optimistic about the Future by Michael Anastassiades at Fondazione ICA Milano in 2021/2022. Photography: Eirini Vourloumis.

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Tip of the Tongue table lamp designed by Michael Anastassiades (2013). Photography: Alexandros Pissourios.

Flutz armchair (2022) and Ordinal table (2018) designed by Michael Anastassiades for Cassina. Photography: Paola Pansini.

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Discover the essence of two Italian excellences in one collection for the first time. ceccotticollezioni.it | poltronafrau.com

Australia Mobilia 534 x 395.indd 3

06/02/25 10:53

Crafting Italian Furniture

A chair, a sofa and a modular seating system prove that the incomparable excellence of Italian design is founded not just on the imagination of its designers, but also on the skill of its artisans.

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“Artigianato” is an Italian word meaning craft, handicrafts and craftsmanship as well as skill, design and drawing. “Artigiano” means artisan and crafts practitioner.

There is no such thing as a typical day at Milan Design Week. You might sink into the soft leather of a newly released sofa, attend a cocktail party in a palazzo or meet a famous designer, or an emerging one. You might stumble across an exhibition with exquisite timber models of Leonardo Da Vinci’s inventions, listen to a string quartet in a garden party, wander through an interactive installation or enjoy your first taste of saffron-flavoured risotto alla Milanese. The whole city comes alive during this week in April each year, with hundreds of thousands of people attending, including designers, journalists and other creatives who fly in from all over the world. It is nothing less than the most inspiring event on any calendar in the world, and the sheer volume of furniture on show is staggering, illustrating the might of the furniture industry globally, but also particularly in this part of northern Italy.

The history of Italian furniture design is often hailed as a success story of industrial design and manufacturing, but its success would never have been possible without a parallel history of exceptional artisanal craftsmanship.

Both of these were required to reach the heights of design excellence that go with the tag “Made in Italy”.

Many of the most famous Italian furniture brands were

founded in the early twentieth century as family businesses specialising in wood or upholstery and grew gradually over the years of industrialisation. In particular, following the second world war “reconstruction” period, Italy’s craft traditions were viewed as one of the most important parts of the nation to resuscitate, and artisans were mobilised to create consumer luxury goods. As a result, Italy enjoyed an “economic miracle” from 1958 to 1963 with a largely agricultural economy transforming into an industrial powerhouse. In particular, the northwest industrial triangle of the country had enormous success producing furniture, fashion (clothing and shoes), motor scooters and cars, along with machinery, plastics and artificial fibres.

In the furniture industry, even as Italy’s boom years owed their economic success and international popularity to rapid industrialisation, all this was still built on a foundation of small-scale, family-run craft workshops.

In her book Crafting Modern Design in Italy: From PostWar to Postmodernism, Catharine Rossi argues that the familiar story of craft being central to Italy’s furniture industry is incomplete. While the input of furniture’s craft practitioners is often referenced, the true value of its contribution is overlooked. “The majority of accounts have favoured a discourse of industrial advance, innate Italian style and hagiography of mainly male, northern architects such as Vico Magistretti, [Gio] Ponti and [Ettore] Sottsass,”

she argues. These stories, she says, merely reinforce the idea of the individual design genius without recognising the true value of the craft tradition in the success of the industry.

With this in mind, let’s look at some individual pieces whose design success is thanks to the artisans and their extraordinary skills. The Superleggera chair was released in 1957 by Cassina after ten years of sketching, technical drawings and prototypes by Gio Ponti, the legendary architect, designer and editor of Domus magazine. Ponti’s obsession was to create the lightest chair possible and, to achieve his aim, he needed to innovate. However, his success in creating the elegant chair, which is now an Italian design icon, also owes something important to its craftspeople, inspired as he was by a ladderback chair from the Ligurian town of Chiavari, originally designed by local artisans for fishermen. Moreover Superleggera, characteristic for its slim legs and ladder back finished with a cane seat that has been woven by hand, is itself an example of exceptional wood workmanship created in the Cassina workshop that synthesises solidity and lightness in one chair.

Cassina has made a name for itself over its history for its timber craftsmanship in addition to industrial production.

It was founded in 1927 by Cesare and Umberto Cassina as a wood workshop in just two rooms of their family home in the town of Meda, now a northern suburb of Milan.

While the earliest designs of Cassina were Umberto’s, it

Fiat 1100 with the 699 Superleggera chairs by Gio Ponti, Cassina Historical Archive.

Top: Throwing the 699 Superleggera chair by Gio Ponti in the Cassina courtyard, 1950s, Cassina Historical Archive. Bottom: 699 Superleggera chairs by Gio Ponti, stacked in Cassina, Meda, Cassina Historical Archive. Photography: Masera.

was Cesare, the upholsterer, who saw the opportunity to collaborate with leading intellectuals at the time, including architects, to create new and innovative work. In Crafting Modern Design in Italy, Catharine Rossi refers to Cesare Cassina as an ‘artisan entrepreneur’, the kind of person who, she argues, was a “key figure for the realisation of much of Italy’s post-war furniture”.

Cassina is still based in Meda and its carpentry workshop continues to be a hub for innovative design. The artisans there pass on their knowledge from generation to generation, producing millimetre-perfect, refined pieces of intricate craftsmanship. The Cassina Research and Development Centre provides a productive environment for architects and designers to collaborate with these artisans to create new works for the brand. This combination of innovative design with a wealth of skills has resulted in the ultimate environment for research and innovation and the production of many new designs as well as iconic pieces from design history.

Another icon of Italian design that owes much to the skills of its artisans is the Chester sofa by historic brand Poltrona Frau. The brand dates back to 1912 and the Chester was one of its first designs, inspired by the Chesterfield sofas that founder Renzo Frau had seen on trips to England. Frau was originally Sardinian but started the brand in Turin—the name of the company comes from his name and the word for armchair in Italian “poltrona”.

Right from the very beginning, the quality of the leather is what set the brand apart.

The history of Poltrona Frau is also a history of luxury furniture—the brand quickly associated itself with the high glamour, luxury and exclusiveness of the roaring 1920s, gifting furniture to prominent cultural and political figures and selling to hotels and ocean liners. From its earliest days, the brand was rubbing shoulders with the elite—one of Frau’s first patrons was Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria who reigned from a model 127 Poltrona Frau chair. After Renzo Frau’s death in 1926, the brand was taken over by his wife, Savina, who ran all company operations. By 1934, Poltrona Frau moved to a new larger space in central Turin and then in 1963, the brand moved its headquarters to Tolentino, about five hours south of Milan in the Marche region where it still has its workshop and tannery. The Poltrona Frau Museum opened there in 2012 to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the company.

One of the most important secrets to Poltrona Frau’s success is the soft, buttery feel of its leather. Pelle Frau® leather is a full-grain natural leather that is the result of years of research into working processes for the cowhides.

The process is patented and involves over 20 different production steps, which is more than twice that of leathers usually used for furnishings. In addition to the quality of its leather finishes, each piece also has an underlying construction that has been carefully assembled by hand using needle and twine, springs, webbing, wood, horsehair and hemp cloth. According to Poltrona Frau’s book Intelligence in Our Hands, “it takes the most dexterous and experienced crafts practitioner between six and ten hours to make the padded structure of just one armchair … There are no shortcuts… Each step is a ritual.” For the Chester, the sequence is even more complex, involving the additional steps of punching the back and fastening the twine needed to create the capitonnée or buttoned padding. The exact distance of the 60 holes for the armchair and 86 holes for the armchair to create the buttoned effect has remained unchanged since 1912.

While timber and leather craftsmanship are both hundreds of years old, newer materials such as foam can also require skilled hands. And foam is a key material for Moroso, a brand located in the north-east town of Udine. The history of Moroso is more recent than that of Cassina or Poltrona Frau, but is no less innovative and is still based on a combination of industrial production and handmade craftsmanship. Established in 1952 by Agostino Moroso and his wife Diana, the brand began with the aim of manufacturing furniture, and in particular sofas and armchairs, based on a production model that balanced industrial processes with handcrafted techniques and finishes. Considering that the 1950s was the decade that polyurethane foam first began being used in furniture construction, the timing was right for the brand to make the most of this new material.

The Misfits modular seating system, designed by Ron Arad for Moroso and released in 2007, is a masterpiece in sculptural foam, made of five large modules, three with a back and two poufs. Each of these creates a play on volumes and empty space, with fun curving shapes made of injected flame-retardant polyurethane foam sitting over an internal steel frame. While the mass-manufacture of the Misfits modules is machine-made, the initial design of the shape

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relied on the manual skills of the prototype-maker in the Moroso showroom, and, to this day, the woollen upholstery is individually fitted over the foam by hand.

The benefits of the polyurethane foam in furniture construction lie not only in the material’s ability to be soft but firm to the touch, but also the fact it can be sculpted into custom shapes, offering endless possibilities for designers. At the Moroso factory, which is now run by Agostino’s daughter Patrizia Moroso as art director and her brother Roberto as CEO, the prototype room is one of the most important parts of the factory. There, the sculpted foam takes form for the first time, often carved by hand according to the shapes sketched by the designers. For many years, Patrizia’s uncle (or ‘zio’) Marino was the highly skilled artisan who performed this role.

At a video tour of the Moroso factory in Udine, northeast of Venice for design website Dezeen, Patrizia Moroso introduces each part of production, room by room, stopping briefly at a prototype of the Misfits armchair to say that it is one of her favourite designs. Ron Arad, in conversation with Omar Moroso, articulates further his relationship with Uncle Marino in the creation of this and other pieces, such as the Matrizia sofa from 2015. “Uncle Marino… is very good at modelling things in foam with a knife, like a Michelangelo but with foam instead of marble,” he says. While Arad loves both hand-carving foam and computer-modelling, he says that there are definitely things that artisans can contribute that machines can’t. For his Matrizia sofa, which is designed to resemble a discarded mattress, he returned to the old way. “Matrizia found itself in this debate,” he says.

“I remember I had to go and persuade Zio (uncle in Italian) Marino, who was very ‘incazzato’ (‘pissed off’ in Italian) about the other ways of doing things, so I had to go to his home and say ‘Look Marino…’.” As a result, the sofa whose name Matrizia melds “mattress” and “Patrizia”, is a true combination of design inspiration and craft skills.

Just as the success of their outstanding food culture is due to an unwillingness to change their cooking traditions, Italians have also benefited from their adherence to traditional ways of making furniture, including crafting in the workshop. Even with industrial innovation and the introduction of mass-manufacturing, Italian brands like Cassina, Poltrona Frau and Moroso continue to value the skilled artisans who work with these materials by hand and, in so doing, continue to create something unrivalled.

Crafting the Willow 1 armchair designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh and produced by Cassina (1904/1973). Photography: Stefano De Monte.

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Poltrona Frau is known for its exceptional craftsmanship and leather’s soft, buttery feel. Photography: Courtesy of Poltrona Frau.

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The making of Moroso’s Bouquet armchair designed by Tokujin Yoshioka (2008). Photography: Alessandro Paderni.

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Faye Toogood: Breaking Barriers

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Model of A Squashed Space by Faye Toogood. Photography: Courtesy of Toogood.

It would be easy to define Faye Toogood as a polymath, a person who knows a lot about many different subjects.

Cerebral, witty, thoughtful, cheeky, generally an all-round bright spark; yet in her reign as one of the most influential, innovative and ingenious female designers over the past two decades, Toogood is so much more than this. She is fearless and funny, unconventional yet disciplined, simultaneously quirky and elegant. Her work has traversed scenography and sculpture for the National Gallery of Victoria to furniture design (including Poltrona Frau, Tacchini, Hem), ceramics for Bitossi, wallpaper for Calico, rugs with CCTapis and throws for Maison Matisse to sunshine yellow Birkenstocks and sleek Porter Yoshida & Co backpacks.

Toogood is nestled on a Gummy sofa, one of her latest designs swathed in a welcoming Pierre Frey deep teal chunky wool bouclé, positioned in a sunny corner of her multidisciplinary studio overlooking Regent’s Canal in London’s bohemian quarter of Camden. It is a new space where the designer and her team’s many interests can cross-pollinate, from interior, furniture and fashion design to painting and sculpture. Tables are scattered with the detritus of play: pots of brushes and paints, gallery shelves filled with miniature maquettes, pinboards covered with new scribbles, workbenches strewn with lengths of fabric, shirt patterns and lumps of clay.

During the many stages of Toogood’s career since she founded her eponymous studio in 2008, the prolific designer’s journey has been one of determination and resilience, endless chameleon-like transformation (both personally and professionally), always pushing boundaries on materials, aesthetics and form, and even recently, throwing a little sexy sauciness into the mix. In a design world that still remains largely a male domain, here she talks to Mobilia about how she is finally happily singing to her own brilliant tune.

Congratulations on being nominated as Maison&Objet’s Designer of the Year for 2025. What does an honour like this mean?

I used to go to Maison&Objet (the interior design trade fair held bi-annually in Paris) when I first joined The World of Interiors (WOI). It was my job to go around the halls twice a year to find interesting things we could feature in the magazine. I was very young, around 21, and I hadn’t really travelled much before. It opened my eyes to the world. So, now, all these years later, to be nominated as its designer of the year is humbling because I feel keenly the direct relationship from where I was then to where I am now.

arts. Instead, I created a very clean, minimalist aesthetic where I could really focus on geometry, shape and form, using steel, bronze, concrete, mesh and other heavy weight materials. I was absolutely not going to work with textiles or ceramics or anything associated with being ‘female’ because it wasn’t the craft bracket I wanted to be in. The Spade chair was one of my first pieces, a three-legged milking stool juxtaposed with the handle of a gardening tool. It was at a point of constrained minimalism, when furniture and objects were very angular, using materials such as marble and brass. Some people really loved Spade and others really didn’t connect with it. It was like a little baby elephant in the room.

When did more rounded, curvaceous forms start to inform your work?

It started with the Roly-Poly chair, launched in 2014, which was inspired by being pregnant and becoming a mother to three daughters, Indigo (now 12), Etta and Wren (7) (Toogood’s husband Matt Gibberd is the co-founder of The Modern House). The day bed, with its long lozenge shape and a big ball at the end literally looks like me lying down with a pregnant tummy. Maybe the sculptural side of me had been set and expressed earlier and so it started to become more about comfort for me than shape. Combining this with colour and decoration came together not long after Covid—I wanted to feel joy. I wanted to feel expression.

I wanted to be surrounded by ‘soft goods’ that made me feel good.

Since then, I’ve become much more interested in the body’s connection with furniture, not in an ergonomic way (I’m not the right designer for that), but I wanted to create pieces that feel almost like a hug. I want them to make you feel completely yourself and completely relaxed sitting in them. It is something I’ve also been learning through developing the Toogood clothing collection with my sister Erica (British cookery writer Nigel Slater and Australian/ New Zealand musician Jordan Rakei are fans of the mechanic jackets, painter shirts and woodsman trousers).

Working with textiles and how the body feels and moves in clothes has made me think the same way about how furniture should feel..

of the brand’s craftsmanship. When I saw the Chesterfields and club chairs, inspired by founder Renzo Frau’s time living in England at the turn of the 20th century, I knew that was something I could work with.

What inspired the collection’s soft, sculptural shapes and wrinkled leather texture?

I wanted to create a club chair in leather where the starting point already felt much easier, loose and relaxed, yet something that felt new. Think old English British club chair meets the 1970s. Initially I went with some small mock-ups I’d made in canvas from which we then almost sculpted the chair in the factory together, like crafting a couture gown. I knew I wanted a tension between the floppy, full cushions with the chair’s harder frame but apart from that, the making process was very freeform. A very old English leather folk games board inspire the rug’s checkerboard design, and an 18th century leather mirror informed the curving, chunky leather-bound rim for the slightly heart-shaped one in this collection. Now the chair, side table and ottoman have launched, we’ll continue to collaborate and I’m hoping they’ll have the confidence to go with the full Squash vision, like the leather patchwork backdrop I designed for the South Kensington flagship store during LDF which had originally been an idea for a rug.

The Roly Poly has joined the lexicon of iconic chairs, initially hand-forged in aluminium and cast in crystal (showcased at the Friedman Benda Gallery in New York) before being translated into polypropylene by Driade for the masses. Is it this interest in the human form that lends your designs a timeless appeal?

Roly Poly’s success taught me that it’s important for people to feel connected to a piece of furniture in a human way. This is why I like to imbue my energy into making models—in clay, cardboard, plaster or fabric—rather than give a CAD drawing to a factory to translate. The more I put myself into something, the more people connect with it.

How did the ‘Squash’ collaboration come about with Poltrona Frau?

Toogood’s latest Assemblage 8 collection introduces two new furniture families: Gummy seating and Palette coffee and console tables. How did these come to life?

I wanted to be taken very seriously in furniture design, so I rid my practice of pattern, colour and the decorative

When they first asked me to work with them, I couldn’t see how Poltrona Frau and Toogood were natural collaborators. Birkenstock or Carhartt on the fashion side made total sense, because there is an urban edginess to them, but Poltrona Frau felt very grown up in its aesthetic.

Still, they said, ‘we’d like to work with you, we don’t know what the output would be, but would you just come and see us?’ So I went to the factory and was instantly seduced

by Poltrona Frau’s history and archive, as well as the rigour

I have become rather obsessed with creating ‘soft goods’, as I call them, and Gummy was particularly part of that. The chairs, sofa and footstool have all the best Toogood qualities: humour (they were first named after a gummy bear—to convey the idea of a bear hug—but then someone said the footstool, especially in cream, looked like a molar); anthropomorphism; and the weird feeling that they are designs that have been around forever and yet feel brand new. The best part is they have been made

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And yet, when you launched Toogood, you were staunchly anti-decoration…

Faye Toogood with the Squash mirror for Poltrona Frau. Photography: Courtesy of Poltrona Frau.

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with natural materials—no foam, no nasty fire-retardant chemicals. And I know people think, ‘oh yes, that sounds very nice’, but to get those shapes in traditional upholstery, and to not be cut out of foam, is really hard.

The shape of the Palette coffee and console table were quite literally inspired by a painter’s palette (something I’ve collected over the years) because it struck me as the perfect coffee table shape. I really don’t like big, solid, rectangular coffee tables in a room. They are so blockish and uninviting, whereas this shape is much easier to live with, and I didn’t want to just put four legs underneath it, so through model making in cardboard, we found a way to slot in support underneath. They look as if they are levitating. I’m working with British furniture maker Sebastian Cox on these—he is sourcing the oak, sycamore and elm for me—and we’re playing around with coloured stains so you can still see the inherent nature of the wood’s knots and grain.

Where do you draw inspiration from for your work?

Everything connected to the natural world—I am a mad collector of twigs, sticks, feathers, stones, even old bird or animal bones. I’m fascinated with those shapes. There are also sculptors that I feel very connected to, like Barbara Hepworth, Richard Serra and Henry Moore.

How important is having a sense of humour in your work?

It’s everything, in particular with the Toogood brand itself, and it’s just an innate part of me. I don’t take myself too seriously. Those who know me, I have a very dry and quite naughty sense of humour; if everyone thinks they’ve got the measure of me, I’ll come back with something they weren’t expecting. I’ve learnt that it’s okay to rip something up and start again; it’s okay to reinvent; it’s okay to shapeshift; and it’s okay to keep evolving. Over the last 20 years of working in design, I’ve changed a lot and I feel okay about that too. I’ve been experimenting, challenging myself and challenging those around me. I feel like that’s my role, really. That’s what I’m there to do. To hopefully bash down a few doors so others can come in and do other things and do them even better than me.

Creating multi-sensory experiences has always played a big part in your work, such as the black and white feast created for the launch of your textiles and rugs for Maison Matisse, transforming the Poltrona Frau flagship store during London Design Festival in September, or creating a surrealist supper with Australian chef Skye Gyngell to celebrate your Maison&Objet honour. Why is this so integral to your vision?

The emotions of touch, smell, sound and taste—these are things inherent in how I tell stories and bring magic.

They also play into my theatrical spirit—if I hadn’t gone into design, I think I would have ended up in the music business or the theatre. I’m not really interested in pure aesthetics anymore; I did used to be, a lot, but that’s now almost a byproduct of what I’m doing. I’m much more interested in the senses and how something makes you feel. For my Poltrona

Frau and Tacchini pieces, how it felt to sit in them dictated the way I designed their overall shape which is not how I would have worked before.

How do you keep complacency at bay?

I go through phases of trying to work out how to break up my own processes and ways of working. A few years ago, I was constantly maquette making, obsessively so, which really pushed my work into a different language. For my Dough stoneware tableware collection, I worked with clay, moulding it while imagining it rising like dough, where everything felt slightly puffed up. I think I made about 15 versions of the Dough mug to send home with friends and family to be put through a teatime test. I wanted to magnify the beauty of the simple ritual of having a cup of tea. And then with the paintings, I was trying to break into colour which I’d previously only explored through landscape. I’m not a formal artist, so they are more childlike, often evocative, impossible and fantastical, with collaged elements that aren’t meant to be there, like grapes as clouds. Then my painting, I thought maybe I should be exploring more around what it feels to be a woman: what is femininity? what is it like to be a woman who is changing?

The Rude rugs, for example, came from a series of paintings I’d done after seeing a recent Francis Bacon: Man and Beast exhibition at the Royal Academy in London. I had a very visceral response to this work, and I wondered how I could interpret those feelings as a midlife woman.

What role does sexuality play in design?

I’ve been through that full journey of completely ignoring it, not having it as part of my practice, nor even wanting it to be acknowledged. In the early days, I wouldn’t even take interviews that were to do with being a female designer. Now, I’m like, let’s really take on what it means to be a woman right now, not as someone 25, but as someone who is 50. I’m rallying against the idea that women aren’t supposed to express sexuality, sensuality, desire. So the Rude rugs were not only a practical challenge—they are usually very flat, rectangular and straightforward, so we wanted to sculpt their texture and change their shapes to fit within a room more as an art piece—but I also liked the fact that people weren’t expecting me to take on colour and pattern and sexuality, and to play around with names like Blue Tit and Poking Fun.

On a personal level, how have your tastes evolved in your own home?

After decades living in London, we are now in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by trees and sheep and we bought our house, a big, brutish Victorian farmhouse, because of where it sits in the landscape. I was drawn to this place because of the traditional nature of the building, but also maybe because it was crying out for colour and pattern, and I felt ready to make sense of what was in the past with the future. So there are lots of antiques and lots of amazing flowery, chintzy fabrics that I always loved when I was at WOI thrown in with prototypes and really contemporary modern sculptural pieces from my archive.

It’s a portrait of where we’ve been and where we’ve come from: layers of stuff we’ve found, stuff we bought when we were living in a white box, stuff I’ve made.

Has seeing life through your children’s eyes changed how you see things too?

Completely. I really want to bring that sense of childhood naïveté back into my work—having children has really inspired my creativity. Before they arrived, I thought it was going to be the opposite; and obviously when they are tiny, you’re time-poor and you don’t have any energy, but I’ve realized creativity is not linear. It comes and it goes, ebbs and flows. If I was going to advise someone younger today, I’d say don’t expect your creativity to always be functioning at a high level in a consistent way. It does dramatically change and what’s happening in your life affects it, but then your work will be all the better for it.

Ultimately, what drives you to keep designing?

As I get older, I feel like I have antennas everywhere. It comes from being a highly sensitive person—things matter to me, maybe sometimes too much.

Tell us about WOMANIFESTO!…

The M&O organisers kindly gave me a big space in the halls in January which I thought could be used as a platform for saying something more than simply showing a retrospective of my work. ‘WOMANIFESTO!’ is an installation inspired by the fair’s theme, Surreality, but I bring things from my archive that celebrate what it has been like being a woman in design and work by other female designers. One day I hope we won’t have to talk about it – the challenges of being a woman in the male-dominated world of design – but for now, it has to be shouted about for a bit.

Faye Toogood with the Squash collection as part of A Squashed Space, an installation at Poltrona Frau’s flagship store on Fulham Road for London Design Festival 2024. Photography: Mark Cocksedge.

Faye Toogood in her studio in London, featuring the artworks of the Rude collection of rugs for CC-Tapis (2024). Photography: John William.

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A Legacy of Light

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The location of the Sarfatti Lake Como house. Photography: Ditlev Rosing.

Astep founder Alessandro Sarfatti spoke to Mobilia Journal about his legacy of luminary lighting design and how he is embracing the new with reverence for the past, writing the next chapter in his family’s history.

Model 1095 designed by Gino Sarfatti and produced by Astep (1968/2023). Photography: Ditlev Rosing.

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My grandfather, Gino [Sarfatti], was quite a genius in his field, recognised in Italy, Europe and, little by little, abroad. Many people call him a lighting designer, but this is incorrect; even the word “designer” didn’t exist back then. He was an engineer and called himself the “artisan of light”, creating lighting objects with skilled artisans using just a few sketches, initially selling to the high-end Milanese bourgeois.

When he sold his company, Arteluce, and retired in 1973, he moved to Lake Como and sold stamps of the Italian Kingdom and the Italian Republic in this little town called Menaggio. I started visiting him when I was 14 and could travel alone, catching the train and then the ferry from Milan.

He smoked a pipe. He had this kind of aura, and I was finally connecting with him. It was only a couple of years after I started visiting him that he died in 1985 when I was 16. So this left me with good memories of him, and he probably influenced me when I needed to choose which work to do some years later.

After completing my university degree and thesis in 1996, I started working with Luceplan, the company my father, Riccardo, founded with my mother. At that moment, he gave me total freedom. We invested in moulds to produce at scale, and Luceplan was the first company to use polycarbonate in lighting.

Eventually, when my family sold Luceplan to the Dutch multinational Philips in 2010, I stayed for a few more years before moving on and giving myself a sabbatical year when I went out and met a lot of people. I also married my wife, Yasmin, and moved to Denmark in 2013. Around this time, I decided to create a new chapter in my family’s history as the third generation and started thinking about how to represent my time.

Through Simona Maschi, founder of the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design (CIID), I met Nicholas

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Zambetti, who is now my business partner. He had created an open-source hardware and software research project, and left Silicon Valley to work with me, bringing the technological knowledge I was looking for. We are still business partners today.

We started Astep in 2014, a lighting company driven by three words from a strategic and philosophical point of view: design, technology and sustainability.

Through networking, I learned about the B Corp movement, which expressed the values I was looking for, a movement of people who see companies as a force for good. Sales and profit are not the only measures of a company’s success; it is also about what you can give back to the community, how you respect your stakeholders and employees, and your attitude towards the planet. We dedicated our time and energy and, in three years, became a B Corp.

The other aspect is the success of re-editions [reproductions of Gino Sarfatti’s iconic designs from years past], which I believe reflects people trying to find a slower pace and connect with timeless products conceived decades ago that are still relevant today. It is about paying tribute to my family’s legacy and the time in which these pieces first existed, but also using technology meaningfully and being as sustainable and respectful as possible.

In the beginning, I named Astep based on taking “a step” forward, but it also means taking a step back. The name is like thinking about the evolution of humankind, Homo sapiens, from when we first appeared on this planet.

You visualise all the small steps, little by little, over 70,000 years that courageous, brilliant and intelligent women and men have taken to bring us here where we are today.

I hope that in my field, making lamps, I can be a small part of this evolution, respecting the past and making a meaningful contribution to continue moving forward.

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Alessandro Sarfatti at the Sarfatti Lake Como house, pictured with the Model 548 table lamp designed by Gino Sarfatti and produced by Astep (1951/2013). The lamp provides both reflected and diffused light due to the adjustable spotlight that is directed up towards a reflecting screen.

Photography: Ditlev Rosing.

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Alessandro Sarfatti, Lake Como. Photography: Ditlev Rosing.

An exterior view of the Sarfatti Lake Como house featuring the Model 548 table lamp, designed by Gino Sarfatti and produced by Astep (1951/2013). Photography: Ditlev Rosing.

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Atelier Alwill: The Power of Storytelling TT ILLE T Y LE HAY ION RSAT E V CON

“We approach our interiors as spaces to be lived in.

We consider them three dimensionally and find moments to pull back to hit those marks. The process is not necessarily conscious, it’s more inherent.”

Romy Alwill. Photography: Prue Ruscoe.

Romy Alwill has a knack for knowing when to say when.

As the creative force behind Atelier Alwill, her established interior design practice in Sydney, Romy has cultivated a reputation for designing homes that embody a calm sophistication, underpinned by creative ingenuity and restraint. Yet Romy’s design journey has been far from linear. From working in art direction in London to a role at Belle magazine, Romy’s diverse industry experience has shaped her creative sensibilities, research-led approach and democratic outlook—all hallmarks of her practice. Today, Romy leads Atelier Alwill with a vision to keep her team small, so that each project remains personal, and every detail thoughtfully considered. As the practice reaches its 20-year anniversary this year, Romy’s focus remains steadfast: balancing meaningful work with an inventive spirit, and above all, letting the work speak for itself.

Your interior design projects are built on strong conceptual foundations. How do you develop these design concepts, and what is the value in doing so?

We always respond to the site first and foremost.

Perhaps that’s not unusual, but it’s certainly a starting point for us. We try to dovetail into the language of the architecture, so it feels like when we do our part the various contributors read as one team—and the design brief is also important because it tells us the client’s story and provides frames of reference. Sometimes the creative concept that we draw from these elements is quite light and not too academic, other times it’s more abstract. In any case, it helps keep the design on track—both for us and the client— even if it drifts into more of a stylistic guide.

You’ve collaborated with architect Luigi Rosselli for over 15 years, starting with a successful project early on. What aspects of his design ethos and working style have contributed to the strength and longevity of your partnership?

Working with Luigi was quite a natural fit from the beginning. Luigi is very fluid with his architecture, but he has a set of signatures that come together in each house.

He’s an artist. His drawings and perspectives… I’ve worked with a lot of architects and not many can do what Luigi does. But even though he knows his game, it’s not at the loss of his creativity. That’s special. We’ve created some incredible work together, often in collaboration with landscape designers Dangar Barin Smith.

You’ve also collaborated quite extensively with your sister, Nadine, of Alwill Architecture.

We went through university together and we’ve done a lot together along the way without treading on each other’s toes. Nadine’s very considered and quite a purist but doesn’t take architecture too seriously. She brings a relaxed feel to her work, and applies a technical, thorough and precise mentality to everything she does.

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Bohemian armchair designed by Patricia Urquiola for Moroso (2008) at Cove House. Photography: Prue Ruscoe.

Looking at your interiors, there’s a beautiful balance of restraint and warmth. How do you ensure spaces feel pared back but also inviting?

Are there any ideas or pursuits you find yourself returning to, or any throughlines you see across your work?

We never want to overstuff or overcook our interiors.

I like to feel calm in spaces and I think they can feel hectic when they’re over-furnished or over-designed—even if they look great as vignettes on Instagram or on the cover of a magazine. We approach our interiors as spaces to be lived in. We consider them three dimensionally and find moments to pull back to hit those marks. The process is not necessarily conscious, it’s more inherent.

I think the underlying interest is pulling out our clients’ stories. We have our own ethos, but our approach is centred on pulling out the unique narrative of the client and reaching into our back pocket of design knowledge to tease out a bespoke solution for them. Our projects don’t look the same—perhaps others can’t necessarily pinpoint that it’s our work or even where the architecture stops, and the interiors start. I enjoy blurring those lines and think that benefits the project. I’m always curious to create a unique conceptual hook. If I can give us a compliment: we’re not a one trick pony.

How did you first develop your design approach?

I lived with my parents in Japan for four years before starting university, which was quite a formative time to learn about aesthetics. I studied interior architecture from more of a modernist perspective, and I also studied the decorative arts. I grew up on the northern beaches of Sydney, so even though our interiors are refined, there’s an element of casualness that’s probably shaped by my upbringing. It’s this combination of experiences that’s influenced my design filters.

That edited yet relaxed sensibility seems to be enhanced by your curation of furniture, art and décor, which lends an authentic, collected feel.

A sense of layering is important to us, so although the pieces are often new, there’s a depth to their curation in colour and texture and form. We like to use modern furniture as a baseline to the house, then add vintage elements or pieces from smaller brands and independent designers to layer the interior. I think it’s important to understand there’s a time and a place for everything and to work out where each moment is best applied. Furniture curation is a big part of our practice, and we have a broad remit of suppliers globally to find the right elements for each project. We’ve sourced a number of pieces from Mobilia over the years, including the Smock and Bohemian armchairs by Patricia Urquiola for Moroso, and items from Cassina and Poltrona Frau—two of my favourite brands.

It’s powerful to have a story behind a space, and I imagine clients take pride in sharing that with others.

Ultimately, it’s their house—it’s not our house. The interior has to express something that resonates with them and that’s part of answering a brief well. Sometimes clients can be drawn to or deterred by something you’ve created for someone else, and I need to tell them: ‘that was her house for her, this is your house for you.’ What I really enjoy about residential work is the emotional connection. We love engaging with our clients, stepping through the process and using our tools to design something completely unique.

Creating bespoke work is what makes me enjoy my job.

Which projects do you feel best express your design spirit?

Peppertree House was a pivotal project for the studio—a classic yet minimalist home designed for fashion designer Camilla Freeman-Topper of Camilla and Marc.

Sandcastle, designed with Luigi, I love. It has moments of 70s inspiration with some of the furniture but still feels contemporary. There’s also Cove House in Manly, which I designed with my sister. It’s nestled into this amazing pocket looking out to Sydney Harbour. It has a modernist feel, and we softened the client’s edgier taste with connections to the gardens and water.

Pacific armchairs designed by Patricia Urquiola for Moroso (2021) at Equanimity. Photography: Prue Ruscoe.

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Capitol Complex armchair (Hommage à Pierre Jeanneret) produced by Cassina (2019) at Equanimity. Photography: Prue Ruscoe.

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Cab 412 chairs designed by Mario Bellini for Cassina (1971) at Arches de Lumière. Photography: Anson Smart.

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Insula: An ‘island of comfort’ to gather TT ILLE T Y LE HAY T DUC PRO

The Insula modular sofa designed by Patricia Urquiola for Kettal (2024).

Spanish brand Kettal continues to redefine luxury outdoor living with the Insula sofa—a collaboration with renowned designer Patricia Urquiola, inspired by the communal seating of Arab majlis, where community members gather to discuss events and local issues, entertain guests, build friendships and have fun.

Patricia Urquiola at the Mobilia showroom. Photography: Sean Fennessy.

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Having collaborated with Urquiola on previous collections such as Maia, Mesh, Band and Cala, Kettal welcomed the opportunity to develop another concept-led product with the seasoned designer. “Patricia was enjoying the majlis on one of her trips and suggested we do something similar,” recalls Antonio Navarro, Kettal’s creative director. “The initial concepts were more detailed but, like all projects, you peel off layers until you’re left with the main essence.”

Referencing the Arab majlis’ low-lying arrangements of sofas, cushions and mattresses, the Insula sofa embraces a rational, horizontal form with carefully balanced proportions. Its modular design consists of an orthogonal aluminium base with rounded edges, topped with smooth cushions and roll backrests, establishing a sleek and elemental presence.

Much like the atmosphere of the majlis, the Insula sofa is designed with socialising in mind. Its seat comes in two sizes, accommodating individual, double or angular backrests to suit a multitude of configurations. “The sofa can be used in an L-shaped configuration for day-to-day use or transformed into an ‘island of comfort’ for special occasions with friends and family,” reflects Navarro.

Combining conceptual thinking with practicality, Kettal and Urquiola designed the sofa’s base to feel grounded yet remain lightweight for effortless reconfiguration and durability in outdoor settings. Aluminium was chosen for its exceptional strength, lightness, and resistance to water and humidity. The base’s gently rounded shape complements the cushions’ soft lines and serves a practical purpose: “Functionally, it avoids possible damage from users’ feet—everything has a purpose,” says Navarro.

The sofa’s roll backrest is a signature of the design and was the most difficult element to resolve. “It couldn’t be completely round because it needed to be stable, yet it needed to be rounded enough to offer comfort in all configurations, with no sharp edges,” explains Navarro. The result is 100% a consequence of its function. “It’s something dynamic that you can move, that you can hug, and that gently supports your head or back,” describes Navarro.

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The product’s versatility promotes a myriad of applications, from workplace reception and lounge spaces to ever-changing uses within the home. “People’s lives are becoming more dynamic and informal,” says Navarro. “In the morning you could set up this sofa for reading and sunbathing. In the afternoon you could set up a classic sofa because your parents are coming over for dinner. In the evening you could make a majilis island to sit with your feet up and socialise with friends. We also see the Insula as a new way for people to meet in the office; a place where you can connect with your colleagues in a more open and accessible way.”

Like all Kettal products, designing for optimum comfort was key. The sofa’s relaxed form is enhanced by plush cushions—the result of layering different foam densities, from hard to soft, to absorb weight evenly. “Being able to sit down in an informal, unexpected and free way makes your body and mind relax, so you’re open to socialising more and with ease. No one can feel stressed if their body is relaxed,” Navarro laughs.

The Insula sofa is underscored by Kettal’s unwavering commitment to sustainability, rooted in the design of premium furniture pieces that endure. “The most ecological act is to make a product that lasts, so the material and energy expenditure can be divided into many years of use,” explains Navarro. In addition, the design’s aluminium components comprise 80% recycled content and are 100% recyclable, its foams and fabrics are 60% recycled and 100% recyclable, and internal PET fibres are 100% recycled, minimising the product’s environmental footprint.

Designed as a complete collection, the Insula sofa is complemented by the Insula square table and Insula rectangular table, each featuring robust aluminium pedestal bases and frames topped with glazed stone tops, and the more delicate Insula side table, designed to nestle between sofa cushions. Testament to Urquiola’s skill in bridging traditional and cutting-edge design, the collection is intuitive and inviting, offering flexibility, a heightened sense of relaxation, and a convivial spirit.

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Inspired by the communal seating of Arab majlis, the Insula modular sofa can be arranged in an “island” configuration where friends and families can put their feet up and socialise.

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The Insula sofa’s modular design consists of an orthogonal aluminium base with rounded edges, topped with smooth cushions and roll backrests, establishing a sleek and elemental presence.

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Littlewood Residence by GOLDEN & InForm LL SHA R A YN M

NW BRO JECT PRO

The dining area of this family home features the Leggera chair designed by Gio Ponti and produced by Cassina (1952/2017), dining table designed by GOLDEN and produced by Mobilia and the Globo Cesta pendant designed by Miguel Milá for Santa & Cole (1962). Photography: Sean Fennessy, photographic styling: Marsha Golemac.

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In a coming together of colour and calm, Littlewood Residence sits modestly and removed, in a quiet Melbourne suburban setting. Celebrating the collaborative spirit of owners Alicia McKimm, co-founder of GOLDEN, and Jon McKimm, director of InForm, the family home for five showcases their individual talents and passion for design.

In an expression of their shared values, aesthetic vision, and the way they experience family life, the home is a unique blend of playful, yet muted sensibilities.

This family home, where the couple resides with their three young children and dog, Peach, was an opportunity to blend their two design worlds. The partnership balances Alicia’s design vision with Jon’s operational expertise in a way where they had the opportunity to be the client. “For something to feel calm,” describes Alicia, “it doesn’t have to be neutral—and what makes this home so unique is that it has a sense of ease and a slowing down of pace—it’s a place that’s both full of life, but at the same time, never too serious.”

The design journey was shaped by the couple’s deep understanding of their family’s needs. “With three young kids, we wanted the house to feel like a sanctuary— somewhere that gives us calm and joy, but also caters to our busy lives,” Alicia says. From the moment you step inside, the home exudes a quiet sophistication, balanced with playful elements that reflect the personalities of its inhabitants.

The residence began with a search for the right location, leading the McKimms to an old, run-down property. “We were lucky to find this place,” recalls Alicia.

“After an extensive letterbox-drop, and being contacted by the previous owners, we knew it was perfect for what we had in mind.”

A sense of discovery begins at the entry, where a sidefoyer opens up the space with a deliberate reveal. The layout is designed around a central core, which grounds the entire house and draws you into the living areas, all of which open up to the garden and pool. “We designed the layout so that the ground floor was all about connection,” explains Alicia. “It’s where we come together as a family, while upstairs needed to be quieter and more private.” The upper level then became a true retreat space, housing the master suite, children’s bedrooms, and a rumpus room—a space designed to allow the family to spread out as the children grow. But the downstairs living areas remain the heart of the home, encouraging togetherness and fluid movement between indoor and outdoor spaces.

With a carefully curated palette of natural finishes that conjure a familiar sense of warmth and tactility throughout, the composition of the materiality was crucial to how the home felt. “We wanted the materials to feel crafted and authentic at the same time,” Alicia notes. Terracotta tiles insert an earthy grounding to the entryway space, reappearing in the mudroom as a reinforcement of the functional and robustness needed within a family home. In contrast, “the red marble bench adds a sculptural quality [to the kitchen] as well as anchoring it” Alicia explains.

“We ultimately wanted to create a balance and the use of stainless-steel bench at the rear adds a layer of practicality to how the home and the kitchen (in particular) needed to support everyday life.”

Sitting at the centre of the home is a deep, burgundystained timber core structure than all of the other spaces and functions pivot around. “The core was the starting point,” Alicia says. “It became the foundation of the house, with everything flowing from there—the material palette, the furniture selection, and the overall feel.” In the more intimate spaces, like the powder room and master ensuite, materiality and colour are used to create a sense of immersive drama. The powder room is an indulgent mix of pink stone, waxed plaster, and Moroccan tiles, creating a sense of theatricality. “We wanted these spaces to feel luxurious but not overly formal,” says Alicia. “It was about striking a balance between richness and restraint.”

In collaboration with Mobilia, the couple selected furnishings that also complemented the architectural form, with an emphasis that they would avoid overpowering the spaces. Sculptural pieces, like the Maralunga sofa, bring a softness and character, while other custom furniture pieces add a personal touch. “The furniture was so important in a space like this,” Alicia reflects. “It had to feel crafted, but also lived-in and comfortable. The Maralunga sofa, for example, is where we spend most of our time as a family.

The kids love it—it’s where they somersault and play. But it

also holds its own as a design piece.”

While designing their own home presented unique challenges for Alicia and Jon, particularly given their combined expertise, they also saw it as an opportunity to be playful and experimental. “When you know so much about design, it’s actually harder to make decisions,” Alicia admits. “There are so many possibilities, and it’s tough to narrow it down. But it was also really special to design something so personal, something that reflects who we

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The Maralunga 40 sofa designed by Vico Magistretti for Cassina (1973), Pipe side table designed by Sebastian Herkner for Moroso (2015) and the Overdyed coffee table by Diesel for Moroso (2010). Photography: Sean Fennessy, photographic styling: Marsha Golemac.

are as a family.” Collaborating with Jon, and drawing on her team at GOLDEN, allowed Alicia to balance creative freedom with pragmatic considerations—an advantage not all clients enjoy.

As the family grows and their lives evolve, Littlewood Residence is planned and designed to evolve with them—as lasting witness to the potential of thoughtful, considered and personal design.

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The living area promotes a sense of warmth and tactility with the Maralunga 40 sofa designed by Vico Magistretti for Cassina (1973), Pipe side table designed by Sebastian Herkner for Moroso (2015) and the Overdyed coffee table by Diesel for Moroso (2010). Photography: Sean Fennessy, photographic styling: Marsha Golemac.

Capitol Complex armchair, a tribute to Pierre Jeanneret produced by Cassina (2019), Overdyed coffee table by Diesel for Moroso (2010) and Shanghai Tip side table designed by Patricia Urquiola for Moroso (2006). Photography: Sean Fennessy, photographic styling: Marsha Golemac.

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Alicia and Jon McKimm in the kitchen of their family home, a reflection of their individual talents and passion for design. Photography: Sean Fennessy, photographic styling: Marsha Golemac.

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A moment of pause: the Gogan sofa designed by Patricia Urquiola for Moroso (2018), Pin rug designed by Patricia Urquiola for CC-Tapis (2023) and the Tabouret Berger stool designed by Charlotte Perriand and produced by Cassina (1953-61/2011). Photography: Sean Fennessy, photographic styling: Marsha Golemac.

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Dudet chair designed by Patricia Urquiola for Cassina (2021). Photography: Sean Fennessy, photographic styling: Marsha Golemac.

cc-tapis.com

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Knots of History

EY URV S G RU T DUC PRO

1972

Noir Blanc

2019

Designed by French architect and designer Charlotte Perriand, Noir Blanc is part of a collection of hand-knotted rugs originally intended as textile panels for the interiors of the Les Arcs ski station in the French Alps. After more than 50 years, CC-Tapis worked closely with Pernette Perriand Barsac and Jacques Barsac to give life to the design which had never been produced before.

Over thousands of years, rugs have served as far more than just interior adornments that provide warmth and protection. They are expressive pieces of art, reflecting the skills, traditions and stories of the artisans who craft them. Today, global design heavyweights CC-Tapis, Golran, Cassina and Poltrona Frau are embracing artisanal production techniques to create distinctive contemporary rugs imbued with a sense of history.

Since its beginnings, Italian company CC-Tapis has united the vision of cutting-edge designers with the artistry of traditional Tibetan rug-makers in Nepal. To craft many of its rugs, artisans meticulously twist yarns of natural Himalayan wool, knot by knot, creating a rectangle from which the final free-form shape of a CC-Tapis rug is cut, leaving corners and sections that are sheared off as excess to be recycled.

A signature design in the CC-Tapis collection and an example of the endless possibilities when merging innovative thinking and traditional craftsmanship is the Triple Slinkie rug by Patricia Urquiola. A succession of chromatic evolutions based on digital artworks, the Slinkie collection precedes Urquiola’s more recent Pipeline collection, which builds on this concept with a series of connected “tubes” overlapping with different layers of Himalayan wool.

Meanwhile, Cassina’s recent Rigadino (2024) collection also designed by Urquiola is inspired by another artisanal tradition: historic Venetian handiwork. Made of 100% wool and hand-knotted, the carpet reinterprets, in a vivid textile pattern, the traditional striped motif typical of the Murano glass-blowing technique.

Another recent design in this survey, Squash (2024) by British designer Faye Toogood for Poltrona Frau, features a checkerboard motif inspired by old English patchwork chairs. Each hand-painted square is translated into fabric using the traditional Berber knotting technique. The dying process and use of natural fibres replicate the handpainted design as faithfully as possible, while the plush fleece and subtly blended threads evoke the nuanced look of brushstrokes.

2021

Equally joyful in name and narrative, Doodles collection is the result of Faye Toogood’s exploration of new styles without boundaries. Drawing on tinkering techniques through the employment of off-cuts and appliqued cords, Doodles create collage styled assemblages. Featuring graphic stitching details form curious patterns, Doodles connects playful cut-out shapes through an overarching style of ready-made collage and a unique combination of thick and fine yarn with hand-cut pile, creating different heights and textures, from smooth to shaggy.

Noir Blanc by Charlotte Perriand—CC-Tapis (1972, hand-knotted)

A survey of contemporary rugs reveals how leading design companies are preserving age-old traditions by creating hand-made pieces that push the boundaries of creativity and craftsmanship.

Interior With Table

Feathers Round

Maarten De Ceulaer has always had an affinity for birds.

To create each image, De Ceulaer scans, digitally isolates and combines various birds, often tweaking and morphing them into further abstraction. The collages are then translated into rich and sophisticated rugs, hand-knotted in Himalayan wool and silk. A sense of depth is added by varying the pile height, emphasising the feathers’ shapes.

Feathers Round by Maarten De Ceulaer—CC-Tapis (2021, handknotted)

Interior With Table by Faye Toogood—CC-Tapis (2019, hand-knotted and hand-stitched)

2018

March Free Shape

2020

Part of India Mahdavi’s Garden of Eden collection, the March Free Shape takes inspiration from the classical Persian garden, drawing on a tradition and culture linking Golran’s historic roots with the designer’s origins.

The carpet’s pattern features a leaf-like motif that seems to dance in a gust of wind through a vivid and dynamic composition.

Lunar Addition

A constellation of deconstructed forms crash against one another in Studiopepe’s Lunar Addiction collection. Each piece is articulated by a series of contrasts: complex patterns against visual regularity; flat surfaces alongside threedimensional components; rough versus smooth textures.

The rugs feature a shaggy pile in natural Himalayan wool juxtaposed against ultra refined and finished sections that are meticulously sculpted by hand..

March Free Shape by India Mahdavi—Golran (2018, hand-knotted)

Lunar Addition by Studiopepe—CC-Tapis (2020, hand-knotted)

2017

Le(s)s

2020

Stroke 1.0

When a rug is produced using artisanal production techniques, colour is not always absorbed into the fibres in the same way, rendering each piece unique. For this reason, designer Christophe Delcourt wanted to work with uniform colours for his La(c)k and Le(s)s collection rather than motifs. Crafted using silk and Himalayan wool, the rug’s design creates the perfect illusion between these two materials, one precious and the other raw.

Taking cues from Lichtenstein’s pop-art brushstroke paintings and the colourful fields of Pablo Tomek’s spontaneous movements, Sabine Marcelis captures artistic gestures such as strokes, wipes, brushes and streaks in a series of hand-knotted rugs crafted by expert artisans in the CC-Tapis atelier in Nepal. Each rug features a gradient of colour saturation and pile height, mirroring a paint stroke’s three-dimensionality and irregular pigment.

Le(s)s by Christophe Delcourt—CC-Tapis (2017, hand-knotted)

Stroke 1.0 by Sabine Marcelis—CC-Tapis (2020, hand-knotted)

2019

Fordite 3

2021

A vortex of colour inspired by the atmosphere of the second planet from the sun, Patricia Urquiola’s Venus Power collection celebrates the feminine attributes that exist within all of us. Decisive black lines reminiscent of graffiti art define the perimeter of floating shapes and are hand-carved to gently rise in a soft and curved 3D form.

Venus by Patricia Urquiola—CC-Tapis (2021, hand-knotted)

2021

Inspired by “Fordite”, a multi-coloured, jewel-like byproduct of the car manufacturing industry made using layers of enamel paint built up over time, Patricia Urquiola uses a similar approach in creating her aptly named collection of rugs for CC-Tapis, combining Himalayan wool, pure silk and aloe from material excess leftover from the regular production process.

Venus

Rotazioni A

Designed by Patricia Urquiola, Rotazioni plays on the repetition of overlapping cylindrical forms that emphasise the circle as the matrix of the design. A scale of pastel colours and chromatic contrasts insinuate the gradient on the surface of the cylinders, creating a three-dimensional effect and a dynamic composition.

Rotazioni A by Patricia Urquiola—CC-Tapis (2021, hand-knotted)

Fordite 3 by Patricia Urquiola—CC-Tapis (2019, hand-knotted)

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2022

Triple Slinkie

2024

The predecessor of Patricia Urquiola’s Pipeline collection, featured later in this survey, Slinkie is a design story revolving around colour: a succession of chromatic evolutions developed in a composite universe of organic shapes, a visual exercise aimed to transform the intangible idea of shade and hue into a finely produced and sophisticated product.

Criss Cross

2024

Criss Cross embodies a dialogue between the old and the new, the traditional and the modern, resulting in innovative rugs deeply rooted in heritage. India Mahdavi’s design blends two artisanal production techniques—chain stitching and hand-tufting—to create complementary decorative layers. This interplay of techniques results in a rich layering of graphic and geometric elements, offering depth and visual intrigue.

Triple Slinkie by Patricia Urquiola—CC-Tapis (2022, hand-knotted)

Rigadino

Made of wool, Rigadino reinterprets, in a vivid textile pattern, the traditional striped motif typical of Murano glass. A thick border decorated with the characteristic black lines of the “rigadin” technique defines the uneven perimeter of the rug, producing an interplay of hypnotic shapes that separate and interweave, again and again.

Rigadino by Patricia Urquiola—Cassina (2024, hand-knotted)

Criss Cross by India Mahdavi—CC-Tapis (2024, hand-tufted and chain stitch)

2023

Pipeline Freeform 1

2024

Pipeline transforms Patricia Urquiola’s digital artworks into a collection of hand-made rugs and wall hangings in which a series of connected tubes emerge from the surface of each piece overlapping on different levels of Himalayan wool into multiple chromatic evolutions.

Pipeline Freeform 1 by Patricia Urquiola—CC-Tapis (2023, handknotted)

2023

Duo

2024

Hand-knotted using the Indo-Tibetan knot, Duo is composed of 80% wool and 20% silk, defined by a pattern that repeats a matrix of squares and rectangles interrupted by lines of silk threads in different colours. This rug forms part of a broader collaboration between two Made in Italy companies: Poltrona Frau and Ceccotti Collezioni.

M’ama non m’ama

Tongue-and-cheek

M’ama non m’ama refers to “Loves Me, Loves Me Not?”, a game of French origin that involves removing petals from a flower to discern whether one’s love is requited. Inspired by nature and these playful romantic gestures, Patricia Urquiola explores the tactility of linen to abstract the organic shapes of flowers into soft and inviting rugs..

Tongue-and-cheek is one of several rugs in Faye Toogood’s Rude collection, the third instalment of handmade rugs in the British designer’s ongoing partnership with CCTapis. Featuring irregular shapes and radical textures, the collection was inspired by Toogood’s visceral reaction to a series of paintings in a Francis Bacon exhibition.

M’ama non m’ama by Patricia Urquiola—CC-Tapis (2024, handknotted)

Tongue-and-cheek by Faye Toogood—CC-Tapis (2024, handknotted)

Squash

2024

The Squash rug features a checkerboard motif inspired by old English patchwork chairs. Each square is handpainted, and the artwork is translated into fabric using the traditional Berber knotting technique. The dyeing process and use of natural fibres replicate the hand-painted design as faithfully as possible, while plush fleece and subtly blended threads evoke the nuanced look of brushstrokes.

Duo by Roberto Lazzeroni—Poltrona Frau (2023, hand-knotted)

2024

Sonora

Patricia Urquiola harmonises ancient embroidery techniques with contemporary graphics by exploring the potential of felted wool yarn for the Sonora collection.

Felted, woolen, multi-coloured threads are hand woven onto a semi-rigid grid, which serves as the support for each rug. CC-Tapis’ Indian weavers follow the structure of the internal grid, creating pixelated patterns which simulate the generation and transmission of sound waves.

Squash by Faye Toogood—Poltrona Frau (2024, Berber knotting)

Sonora by Patricia Urquiola—CC-Tapis (2024, hand-woven)

2023

Quadratic

2024

Designed by Objects of Common Interest, the Moiré collection interprets the natural patterns of grain and rings occurring in wood, recreated with a complex two-centuryold jacquard technique borrowed from the textile weaving world: a first for CC-Tapis..

Quadratic by Objects of Common Interest—CC-Tapis (2023, jacquard)

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Raag

2024

Vice Versa

Internationally acclaimed design studio Doshi Levien creates a chromatic language of composition and proportion with the Raag collection. CC-Tapis artisans use the Dhurrie technique to hand-weave a flat fabric, on which some or all seven “notes” (or colours) are played in ascending and descending scales, producing surprising rhythms informed by mathematics and experimentation.

Influenced by the 20th-century Bauhaus movement, Chiara Andreatti creates Vice Versa, a collection of handwoven rugs made by expert Indian artisans where graphic shapes define a rhythmic and hypnotic design. An ode to primordial gestures which embrace minimalism through the use of undyed colours, Vice Versa applies natural materials such as jute and wool to the bold design.

Raag by Doshi Levien—CC-Tapis (2024, dhurrie)

Vice Versa by Chiara Andreatti—CC-Tapis (2024, hand-woven)

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Leather Reimagined

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EN D BR N U AM ROS GHT INSI

Pelle Frau® Impact Less leather, Courtesy of Poltrona Frau.

Harnessing over a century of expertise, iconic Italian company Poltrona Frau is continually pushing the boundaries of aesthetics and performance in leather.

Their latest innovation sets an exciting new precedent for sustainability.

There are some designers so visionary, they not only set industry standards but consistently redefine them.

Italian leather company Poltrona Frau is one of these rare innovators that constantly moves the needle—engaging in rigorous research and development, finessing their design processes and reinventing best practice. Their latest innovation Pelle Frau® Impact Less leather exemplifies this approach.

“The development of Impact Less leather reflects the brand’s dedication to creating more eco-friendly products while maintaining high-quality standards,” says Poltrona Frau’s chief executive Nicola Coropulis. “By pioneering this innovative leather, Poltrona Frau sets a benchmark in the design industry, showcasing that luxury and sustainability can coexist.”

Launched in 2022, this new sustainable leather marks a significant milestone for the Tolentino-based company.

Since its inception in 1912, Poltrona Frau has become synonymous with luxury leatherwares, known for their meticulous 21 step leather tanning process and iconic designs for the likes of Ferrari, Maserati and Alfa Romeo, as well as luxury hotels, airlines and the Italian royal family.

But for Poltrona Frau, luxury needn’t come at the expense of ethics.

Conceived over 30 years of research and development, Pelle Frau Impact Less is an environmentally friendly line of leather made using chromium free tanning processes, while maintaining the smooth, supple finish and durability the brand is known for. Standing apart from all other leathers on the market, it also reduces the use of water and chemicals, and is made from energy obtained from 100% renewable sources. Furthermore, the CO2 emissions generated throughout its production cycle are offset by contributing to environmental initiatives.

Currently, 90% of Pelle Frau (Poltrona Frau’s signature, high-quality leather range) is produced using the Impact Less method, and by 2030, the entire Pelle Frau catalogue and the full range of Poltrona Frau products will follow suit.

“The research and development process for Pelle Frau Impact Less has been a remarkable journey spanning approximately 30 years,” says Coropulis. “At the heart of this endeavour is the R&D Leather department, a long term commitment to leather research and the processes of tanning, finishing and processing, always focused on energy savings and reducing environmental impact.”

According to Coropulis, one of the most challenging aspects of developing Impact Less leather was removing ingredients from the tanning recipe while still managing to preserve the distinctive aesthetic and performance characteristics which set the brand apart. But it seems, after 30 years of trial and error, they’ve certainly got the recipe right. “The Impact Less process has garnered significant appreciation from clients, particularly in the luxury

automotive sector,” Coropulis explains. “In fact, sustainable projects like Impact Less are now being developed at their request.”

Pelle Frau Impact Less leather has already featured in a number of collaborations and special projects, showcasing its exceptional versatility and quality. It was used to recreate the legendary Archibald armchair for the company’s 110th anniversary in 2022, in a collaboration with ArgentineSpanish artist Felipe Pantone, as well as projects with the British-Ghanaian fashion designer Ozwald Boateng and the Vanity Fair XC Imagine Edition in partnership with the renowned Milanese brand Fornasetti.

Commenting on the project with Felipe Pantone, Coropulis says: “This collaboration aimed to shift Poltrona Frau’s perspective towards the future, not only in terms of our first partnership with an international artist but also concerning environmental protection.”

While the Impact Less line is definitely something to be celebrated, sustainability and innovation are nothing new to Poltrona Frau. Since the company’s beginnings in a small workshop in Turin over a century ago, founder Renzo Frau was dedicated to creating durable armchairs that would last generations, made entirely from leather—a sustainable by-product sourced from the leftovers of the food industry.

Since then, its sustainability practices have been further refined, ensuring leather furniture can be easily disassembled and reused at the end of its lifecycle (100 years or more), and manufacturing 95% of its products within a 35 kilometre radius of its headquarters in Tolentino, minimising its logistical impact.

“Sustainability has always been a defining value for Poltrona Frau, not only in terms of materials but also in its philosophy,” says Coropulis. “One of the brand’s core attributes is durability; after all, there is nothing more sustainable than a product designed to last for generations.”

Looking to the future, Poltrona Frau is eager to continue its world-leading leather research, further minimising their environmental impact and encouraging their contemporaries, partners and clients to do the same.

“The long-term vision is to integrate sustainable practices into every aspect of production, from product design to distribution and consumption,” Coropulis says.

“The aspiration is to become an example in the design sector, demonstrating that luxury and responsibility can coexist.”

Pelle Frau® Impact Less leather, Courtesy of Poltrona Frau.

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Room for Games

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ACROSS Armchair designed by Jean-Marie Massaud for 6-across 12-down (9) 4 Italian city where 24-across was founded and its factory is located (4) 6 & 12- Furniture company founded in 1912 in Turin, DOWN Italy (8,4) 9 Italian architect, furniture designer and industrial designer. Also the creator of 24-across’s Esosoft Outdoor sofa, _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Citterio (7) 10 CC-Tapis produces _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ rugs with a new approach to traditional methods (8) 14 Passing on experience from generation to generation, and a nod to the theme of this issue of Mobilia Journal (7) 15 6-across 12-down’s emblematic armchair; also the name of a famous American monthly magazine, Vanity _ _ _ _ (4) 17 & 16- Italian designer, artist and master of architecture DOWN born in 1891 (3,5) 18 Luxury Italian car brand that has collaborated with 6-across 12-down (7) 21 The world’s first freestanding cowhide chair that requires multiple stages of 15-across workmanship (3) 22 Italian town where 6-across 12-down’s factory is located (9) 23 Prestigious Italian furniture manufacturer (7) 1

Pavilion V by Vincent Van Duysen Insula by Patricia Urquiola

Create, innovate. Design.

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6-across 12-down’s uses 22,000kg of this material each year (9) India Mahdavi created scenography to accompany this twentieth century painter’s work for a 2023 exhibition at NGV, Pierre _ _ _ _ _ _ _ (7) Traditional sitting place and centre of discourse in Arab cultures, from which Patricia Urquiola drew inspiration for her Insula modular sofa (6) Luxury Italian car brand that has collaborated with 6-across 12-down, _ _ _ _ Romeo (4) British-Ghanaian fashion designer, _ _ _ _ _ _ Boateng (6) Prime material for crafting timeless luxury furniture pieces (4) Luxury Italian car brand that has collaborated with 6-across 12-down (8) See 6-across Where Spanish outdoor furniture brand Kettal is based (9) See 17-across One of the most significant figures in the history of Italian industrial design, _ _ _ _ Sarfatti (4) India Mahdavi’s collection of rugs for Golran, “Garden of _ _ _ _” (4) Enduring furniture pieces and designers (5)

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Join the Dots by Phont Design. Crossword by Liam Runnalls.

Solutions on page 03

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Things That Go Together S IADE S S A AST L AN

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01 ROUND STONE I remember as a teenager, I used to spend hours walking along the beach, searching for the perfectly round pebble.

Every holiday, every journey to another place became a project, an obsession to find the ultimate accidental formation. Sometimes, I would get excited when I spotted a pebble half buried in the sand and I would pray that, when I picked it up, there would be nothing distorting its shape.

Only now do I look at this big collection of stones and see how beautifully different they all are.

02 YOGA I am a keen ashtanga yoga practitioner. In a previous life I used to run yoga retreats in Mani, Peloponnese Greece, together with my teacher Kristina Karitinos Ireland. This is a picture of us practicing on a concrete pier by the sea below the hotel.

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05 CYPRIOT GARMENT HOOK A Cypriot gold garment hook circa 1600 to 1100 B.C. I think it has an interesting relationship to my work. Every few years we produce a Christmas gift that we send to clients and friends. In 2018 we made a replica of this piece in a different scale to be used as a keychain.

been admiring and following for a long time. This is an old piece of his from 2011 which I was lucky to see in a gallery in London.

04 CYPRUS — LUIGI PALMA DI CESNOLA Luigi Palma di Cesnola was United States consul at Larnaca in Cyprus between 1865 and 1876. During his stay, he carried out various uncontrolled excavations and shipped some 35,000 pieces to the US. In 1873, he sold his collection to the recently established Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. It gave significant basis to the new museum, of which Cesnola eventually became the first director in 1879. This is a book by Cesnola, titled Cyprus: Its Ancient Cities, Tombs, and Temples (1877, Harvard University)—an amazing gift from a friend a couple of years ago.

06 FLOWERING MONSTERA DELICIOSA Our studio is in an old workshop building in Camden. It has a huge skylight that provides the perfect setting for plants to grow. We were lucky to experience our Monstera flowering two years after moving in.

09 SKETCHES I sketch a lot, so I have all these sketchbooks, and they’re easy. It’s just a practical thing, I can carry it everywhere, I can sketch in the places where I find myself, on a plane or in an airport lounge. I wish I could actually make things while I travel, but it’s almost impossible to do.

CYPRUS — LUIGI PALMA DI CESNOLA

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10 DAVID WEISS — METAMORPHOSES (DETAIL) I love the humour in Peter Fischli and Weiss’ work. This is from the exhibition Metamorphoses at Matthew Marks Gallery, which comprised 16 works made by Weiss between 1975 and 1978, before he and Fischli started collaborating.

11 DETAIL FROM THINGS THAT GO TOGETHER My collection started from a childhood obsession with picking things up, everywhere I went. It seemed that they were the easiest things to steal—from nature. It’s right there! And I was also fascinated with the role of nature as a designer. The fact that it’s an object, and nature made it that way; I was fascinated with that idea.

12 MICHAEL ANASTASSIADES Michael Anastassiades is a Cypriot-born, London-based designer whose practice encompasses product, spatial interventions and experimental works, often transcending the distinctions between different fields of creativity. With a career spanning more than 20 years, Anastassiades has conceived lights, furniture and objects characterised by a poetic yet rigorous interpretation of technology, materials and functions. Here, he provides an insight into his various points of reference and inspiration: from the natural world to his native Cyprus, personal memories, art and everyday life.

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DAVID WEISS — METAMORPHOSES (DETAIL)

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DETAIL FROM THINGS THAT GO TOGETHER

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MICHAEL ANASTASSIADES

FLOWERING MONSTERA DELICIOSA

YOGA

KASTELLORIZO

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CYPRIOT GARMENT HOOK

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DANIEL SINSEL 07 I get inspired by artist’s work and I use it as a reference in my creative process. I have recently started collecting, but I equally love following gallery exhibitions when travelling.

Art museums are the highlights of my trips. This is a painting by German artist Daniel Sinsel, whose work I have

ATHENS NATIONAL GALLERY 08 Details from works at the National Gallery in Athens

ROUND STONE

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03 KASTELLORIZO I discovered Kastellorizo about 10 years ago. I have never missed a summer vacation there since. This is a picture that I managed to find from the National Geographic archives by an Italian photographer who documented life on the island in the 1930s.

POSTCARDS

DANIEL SINSEL

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MOBILIA JOURNAL

ISSUE 3

ATHENS NATIONAL GALLERY

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SKETCHES

POSTCARDS

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photo Alessandro Paderni — set coordinator Marco Viola

Moroso Udine Milan London New York Sydney moroso.it @morosofficial Gruuve, 2024 Ruff, 2021 Pacific, 2008

by Patricia Urquiola Mangiafuoco, 2024

by Zanellato/Bor totto Ripple chair, 2005

by Ron Arad

2025 02 AD Mobilia_265x380_Gruuve+Pebble Rubble.indd 1

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