Dialogues
At the UNESCO headquarters in Paris, ceramic decorations on two spectacular walls evoke the beauty of the Sun and the Moon. The style is unquestionably Joan Miró’s. The murals, however, bear two signatures: the Catalan artist wanted his own legendary name to be linked to that of master ceramicist José Llorens Artigas, whose name was clearly less known, but no less important. The double signature conveys a revolutionary message: it underlines the value of the dialogue between artist and ‘craftsman’, between creator and artificer, between a visionary inspiration and its translation into a wondrous objective correlative. At the same time, it bears witness to a genius loci that only the hand of man can reveal. Doppia Firma [Double Signature] is therefore the name that we have chosen, together with the magazine Living and yoox.com, for the special objects that we are presenting at the Salone del Mobile 2016.
The double signature conveys a revolutionary message: it underlines the value of the dialogue between artist and ‘craftsman’, between creator and artificer
This collection was conceived to emphasise the dialogue that can turn an idea into a generative project: the dialogue between the designer’s vision and the craftsman’s skill. In this process, their dynamic and interacting competences turn the spotlight on rare, unknown and often forgotten crafts. An illuminating spark ignites this refined rarity, in which authorship is certified by the double signature of the protagonists. At a time when everything is carelessly duplicated, extracted and synthesised, the combined work of hand and mind passionately raises the issue of the preciousness of resources: the intellectual, artisanal and boldly contemporary resources that are undaunted by the gap between what is new and what is beautiful.
The Doppia Firma project embraces design and métiers d’art, experimentation and the alchemy of thought, because the energy that drives our lives can only be generated through an exchange of ideas. After all, wisdom is always the child of dialogue and exchange. All of Plato’s works – the highest interpreter of human nature and divine motions - have been handed down to us in the form of dialogues. The energy that feeds our thought and breathes life into our spirit comes from the exchange of ideas. Every substance that is essential to our lives flows, runs, merges: blood, water, time, even money. In its being fertile, permeable and shared, the liquid dimension represents at best the contemporary challenge faced by those who aim at building value on cultural production: acknowledging authorship, originality and authenticity.