11 January 2016

The Pan 999 set of cooking utensils designed by Tobia Scarpa is the most recent stage on a course that the Milanese silversmith’s studio San Lorenzo has been following since 1970. The new line is the offshoot of a study, begun in 1992, that had led to the development of a new system (now covered by an international patent) for binding silver to pure iron, allowing it to be used for cooking: the result of that research was the Cooking in Pure Silver collection, designed by Afra and Tobia Scarpa and presented in 1999, which debunked the myth that silver has no metallurgical characteristics and revealed its important properties. In fact the noble metal is an even better conductor of heat than copper, able to diffuse it in a uniform manner, allowing food to be cooked rapidly at a low temperature and thus preserving its nutrient value, avoiding burning and performing an antibacterial action. The application of iron on the outside serves to amplify these properties, limiting the dispersion of heat and making the containers suitable for any kind of burner. But while technology was an indispensable part of that first collection, just as it is of this new one, the design is no less interesting. Tobia Scarpa has bet on essential and archetypal forms, underlining the functional use of silver and bringing out its aesthetic qualities. The handles are hollow, light and practical, and the only formal concession is the pronounced border of the containers, which makes it easier to pour liquids. “The attempt to make the secret soul of the material speak is the leitmotiv of my way of designing,” he declares in the video biography The Secret Soul of Things. “It is going to look within the structure of materials for something that can reverberate on its formal aspect.”