Salvatori’s New Collections Unveiled at Milan Design Week 2022.

Luca Nichetto’s Flirt table and chair for Salvatori.

Luca Nichetto’s Flirt table and chair for Salvatori.

The embossed chessboard revealed.

Teo table lamp by Nichetto, featuring a natural stone base and a sheet of rice paper.

Salone del Mobile has returned this year with a vengeance and with it, a standout show by the renowned Italian design brand Salvatori. Coinciding with the event’s 60-year anniversary, the Tuscan-based natural stone specialists presented an array of new collections in collaboration with some big names, from Luca Nichetto and Kengo Kuma to John Pawson.

The collections are held at both the Solferino showroom in the heart of Brera and Casa Salvatori, the Milanese home of CEO Gabriele Salvatori. Designed by Piero Lissoni the showroom sits above an intimate courtyard in one of Milan’s intimate secret corners. Just around the corner at Casa Salvatori, the walls are painted in striking colours—hand selected by Elisa Ossino—providing a dramatic backdrop for a myriad of products in a real-life context.

With a line-up of some of the most exciting talent working in design today, the presentation was varied and compelling. Here we share some of our highlights.

Flirt & Teo

If you’ve ever thought that chess is the ultimate game of seduction, you are not alone. Multidisciplinary designer Luca Nichetto explores that very theme in Flirt, his exquisite set of chairs and table, Salvatori’s first foray into furniture.

With its slender form and playful air, the circular table is almost coquettish. With just a few simple movements, the smooth dark brown leather top turns over and an embossed chessboard is revealed. Below, a walnut casket ensconced between the graphite grey legs holds the stone and metal playing pieces and even a pencil and notepad nestled in a separate compartment.

Complimenting the table is Teo, an ingenious table lamp by Nichetto, who was inspired by works of the architect I.M. Pei. It compromises of a simple form with a natural circular base in Pietra d’Avola or Crema d’Orcia stone and a sheet of rice paper funnelled to emit a beautiful soft glow.

Pawson’s circular stone table. Unusually low, the base is concealed creating a sense of extreme lightness to the shape.

Omphalos Collection

True to John Pawson’s strict minimalist aesthetic, Omphalos coffee tables are understated yet commanding, contrasting the stone’s materiality and substance to create a sense of unexpected lightness.

Inspired by the myth of Zeus and his quest to identify the centre of the world, Pawson wanted to create an object that captures that sense of centrality, effortlessly drawing our gaze to it, almost involuntarily but spontaneously.
Available in both circular and rectangular versions, with their unusually generous dimensions, the tables make an instant impact. Unusually low, they seem to hover just above the ground, an effect created by their extraordinary design, which conceals the base and lends a sense of extreme lightness, which tempers their monumentality.

“The challenge was to make the stone—which has great visual as well as physical heft—appear to be levitating. Rounding the edges of the table top helps lighten the stone’s visual weight,” Pawson explains.

Kengo Kuma’s Koushi collection is seen alongside Nichetto’s Flirt table and chair.

Elements in wood, fabric and stone can be added to the Koushi modular blocks.

Highly versatile the blocks can be combined to create a series of furniture pieces like this bookcase.

Koushi Collection

An unexpected addition to Salvatori’s repertoire, Kengo Kuma’s Koushi innovative modular furniture system strikes a balance between high-end design and totally customisable decor.

Inspired by an age-old Japanese tradition that utilised modular solutions to maximise living spaces, the concept is so simple it can lend itself to any space. It consists of a series of oak batons that are attached to each other via an ingenious joint to create the frame of a cube. Elements in wood, fabric and stone can then be added to develop the look and function the users decide upon. These building blocks can be combined to create furniture ranging from a coffee table to a bookcase to a room divider.

Versatility aside, the collection also delivers on sustainability. With eco-friendly materials and environmentally-aware processes used to produce Koushi, it’s a piece that speaks directly with the year’s FuoriSalone theme “Between Time and Space”.

Salvatori is available in Australia exclusively through Boffi Studio Sydney and Melbourne. For more information on the collections, visit salvatoriofficial.com.

DISCOVER MORE

Pawson’s Omphalos coffee table in square, seen alongside pieces from Salvatori’s existing collection.

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[Images courtesy of Salvatori.]