18 September 2014
Affection, communication, relationship. This was the recipe Stefano Giovannoni came up with in the early nineties as a way of imagining a new kind of design, one capable not only of responding to a need, as had been the case after the war, but also of speaking, of making people think, bringing a smile to their faces or sowing the seeds of doubt. In 1989, before convincing Alberto Alessi that the world needed colored plastic to shake up the domestic scene, the designer from La Spezia and Guido Venturini, working together under the name King-Kong, created a steel tray with a motif of little men forming a ring-around-the-rosy (Girotondo in Italian), like the ones cut out of paper by children. The reference is precise and hits the mark: the world of childhood is memory and emotion, but fun too. Our basic needs have now been met, but the fantasy that generates desire is still there to be stimulated. The little men invented by King-Kong proved such a success that over the years they became a recurrent motif on many objects produced by the famous Omegna-based company: baskets, letter-holders, caddies, clips, bookmarks, picture frames and others.
Photo: Emanuela Carelli.
Photo: Emanuela Carelli.
Photo: Emanuela Carelli.
Photo: Emanuela Carelli.
Photo: Emanuela Carelli.
Photo: Emanuela Carelli.
Photo: Emanuela Carelli.
Photo: Giacomo Giannini.
Photo: Giacomo Giannini.