Milan
Palazzo Litta

On the occasion of the 2023 Salone del Mobile, the Michelangelo Foundation for Creativity and Craftsmanship is pleased to present the seventh edition of Doppia Firma. Dialogues Between Design and Artisanal Excellence. The project was conceived by the Fondazione Cologni dei Mestieri d’Arte and developed with Living, the interiors, design and lifestyle magazine published by Corriere della Sera.

Doppia Firma spotlights the alliance between design innovation and the tradition of great master artisans not only from Europe, but for the first time also from other continents, such as Asia (with a project crafted in Pakistan) and Latin America (with the works of Colombian artisans), in order to generate a creative partnership between a designer/artist and an artisan, or a manufacturer of excellence. These one-of-a-kind objects are born from the cross-fertilisation between a design culture and a savoir-faire that is an authentic expression of its region of origin. 

Doppia Firma 2023 focuses on the fascinating concept of “playfulness”: a theme that has always been represented in contemporary and applied arts, yielding very interesting and often original results, unbound by rules and conventions. In fact, the concept embraces playfulness and humour, irony and allusion, metaphor, jest and deliberate confusion, going as far as overturning perspectives and values. In this conceptual realm, the designer and the master artisan are invited to express their vision, through exchange and rule breaking, evoking irony and fun, within a spirit of pure pleasure and creative freedom. As Ernesto L. Francalanci observed in a historical and fundamental text on this topic: “The phenomenon of playfulness uncovers a broader constellation of references, which orbit around the concept of allusion, ranging from the notions of playing and joking to that of the various types of humour, and therefore of wit and comicality (...) playfulness is expressed above all by the power of contamination and transgressive fusion of contents related to knowledge and memory.” (Del Ludico. Dopo il sorriso delle avanguardie, Milan, Mazzotta, 1982).

For this year’s edition, the organising partners have thoroughly researched, on an international level, a series of works created around this theme in the spirit of Doppia Firma. A spirit that has long since established itself both as a methodology and a benchmark, becoming a much-appreciated format that has inspired a number of similar initiatives, in which designer and master artisan interact, complement each other and work with the same authorial dignity (hence the principle of the “double signature”). This meaningful selection was also made possible thanks to the invaluable contribution of the Michelangelo Foundation’s international network, consisting of leading European institutions involved in promoting craftsmanship.