Cersaie 2022 begins on 26 September (until 30 September). It is therefore inevitable to talk about ceramics these days.
We decided to do it with Diego Grandi, Vincent Van Duysen and Ferruccio Laviani. three very different designers, each with their own design attitude and their own gaze on the theme of surfaces.
Together with them we have tried to reconstruct a vademecum on the subject.
Read also: Cersaie 2022: the news not to be missed
First point: when did design begin to deal with surfaces and ceramics?
Easy question: practically immediately. Among the 'masters' mentioned by Ferruccio Laviani, part of his cultural background and his inspirations, is Gio Ponti who in 1962 signed the total look of the Hotel Parco dei Principi in Sorrento and also designs the surfaces.
Ponti was not new to the material - one of his first assignments is the artistic direction of Richard Ginori - nor to an interior design that dialogues with architecture. "Gio Ponti also did a beautiful job with Marazzi, but he does not depart from a traditional interpretation: decorative, ornamental".
Ponti attempted to get out of the square shape, to use curvilinear tiles as part of an abstract decorative mosaic.
It was 1960 when he designed the tile Triennale, the first attempt to build a new vocabulary: interpretable, not necessarily repetitive. Afterwards, there are very few designers who do not deal with surfaces, but it is technology that makes the sector make the great leap in typology.
"I remember a work of Droog Design in which for the first time we saw ceramic become a skin that covered everything: floors and walls, but also furniture and objects", explains Diego Large. But it is the advent of minimum thickness that allows the tile to be transformed into a second skin.