Mobili da Pranzo Vasi
Mobili da Pranzo
Faculty Michael Kennedy
Studio 05 Propositions, Italian Furniture Design
Award Taubman College Student Show Honoree, 2020
Taubman College, University of Michigan
Winter 2019
Photography Freddy Foote
This furniture set was designed to celebrate breaking bread with friends and family - Mobili da Pranzo means “dining furniture” in Italian. Our studio traveled to Milan, Italy for Design Week, where we attended Salone di Mobile 2019 - the annual international furniture expo. I studied the the prolific career Italian architect and furniture designer, Gio Ponti (1891-1979), who embraced the Modern Movement and is considered to be the among the most influential furniture designers of the 20th century. What I admire about his work it’s balance of simplicity with sophistication, and elegance with casualness. Mobili da Pranzo attempts to emulate these qualities of Ponti’s work.
These vases celebrate the pure form of the cone. Specifically, they are trunkated, right-angle cones, with a piece subtracted using the same cone. On the right are some of the iterations of this formfinding process. They were cast using a slipcasting process from molds that I cast out of plaster, from milled foam. The glazes were chosen to complement the color pallete of the table.
