But now let's focus on the companies specialized in materials which, between the end of September and the beginning of October, presented - with considerable feedback - the news from two reference fairs, Cersaie in Bologna for ceramics and bathrooms and Marmomac in Verona for marble and natural stone. We have chosen three - 41zero42 , Margraf and Mutina - and explain why we think they won on field.

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41Zero42: winning communication

The ceramic brand 41zero42 is not new to communication projects that convey content, tell a story, in which graphics become a product and vice versa, giving life to a ' corporate identity. What is certain is that no one expected a basketball court at Cersaie. An Eighties playground, complete with players, able to catapult visitors into the gym of an American high school like those made famous TV series.

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The stand designed for Cersaie, in addition to surprising in itself, best represented the new Pixel collection, explained in this report. Composed of 41 colors, it is designed for to build' 80s video game surfaces or 40s motifs, Techno music equalizers or Soviet-style swimming pools. The combinations can be pop or classic, geometric or abstract macro mosaics, cold tones alternating with warm ones. To win, in short, is the compositional freedom, with absolutely vintage references.

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Cristina's stone garden Celestino for Margraf

Let's move now to Verona, to Marmomac, where the debut, super chic, of the collaboration between Margraf and Cristina Celestino which best describes the potential - cultured, malleable and feminine - of stone materials. Presented as part of the In Our Time exhibition by The Italian Stone Theater, Repére is a hybrid interior-exterior space, a sort of stone garden, conceived as a place to take time for self-care, in direct contact with water.

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Permeable to sight and passage, the small stone garden is structured in steps on which are placed, like sculptures, functional objects: a sink, a planter and a shower tray. The volumes arise from the combination of different marbles - Fior di Pesco Carnico, Verde Giada and Onice Rosa - worked as a single block of material that makes the different layers of which it is composed emerge in the concavities.

What stands out is Repère Collection, the texture that stands out for the marble studs placed on the slight concavities of the marble slab.

For the Marmomac stand, Cristina Celestino has created an exhibition space that emphasizes marble and stone as primordial building materials. What emerges is Margraf's ability to create, which has always extracted and molds rough blocks of natural stone to transform them into architecture but also furnishings, accessories and hybrid structures.

The protagonists of the spectacular stand are the 3D coatings of the new Fluctus collection, developed by Margraf Innovation Lab, which is inspired by the movement of the sea waves and their effect on the seabed.

Mutina and i Bouroullec: 10 of an artful collaboration

But let's go back to Emilia-Romagna, to be precise to Fiorano Modenese , where, on the occasion of Cersaie, the 'headquarters of Mutina was set up as a gallery d'art to celebrate 10 years of collaboration with Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec. An industrial and at the same time sartorial ceramic project that is also artistic and intellectual.

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The collaboration between excellences, productive and cultural, can only lead to collections to be exhibited as artistic works. For Mutina, ceramics are conceived as a author's product made with a process that combines craftsmanship and innovative technologies. Tangible testimony of the brand's conceptual philosophy is Mutina for Art, a path dedicated to contemporary art born in the inside Mut, the exhibition space that includes a program of exhibitions and the This Is Not a Prize, housed in the company headquarters designed by Angelo Mangiarotti.

Born to celebrate the fruitful partnership between Mutina and the Bouroullec brothers, Ensemble is a large project, composed of the re-editions of Pico and Rombini and two new ceramic collections, Punto and Bloc, to which is added the unpublished Pico Bois, the pattern of the Pico line declined on a real wood parquet floor.

Apparently very different from each other, all the lines fully express the research and essence of the work carried out over these ten years. United by a common stylistic code, the collections can be mixed together to create interiors with a sophisticated and cultured aesthetic coherence.

The project that celebrates the collaboration between Mutina and the Bouroullec brothers is embellished by the sculptural and sophisticated Rombini Vases. Produced in collaboration with Bitossi, the vases are made entirely by hand, applying the strips of the new Rombini Triangle Extra Small one by one. The use of ceramic modules has allowed the development of decorative elements with an architectural taste that come to life through the play of light that is created on the surface.

The term Ensemble - together, in French - refers precisely to the organicity of shapes and colors that distinguishes the projects permeated by the atmospheres of Brittany, the homeland of Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec to whom they are deeply connected.

Ensemble perfectly embodies the continuous exchange on which the relationship between Mutina and designers is based. "The relationship with Mutina is very particular", explain the Bouroullec brothers, "it is based on passion but also on fun, on sharing ideas, on an intense culinary activity, sometimes even on a tennis match. It is wonderful to have such a strong bond, such a true and intense friendship". And here is that ceramic from art returns to the field .

This is how you win, everything field.