La Macina di San Cresci

Sitting and seating, a limited-edition collection of seats by Martino Gamper + Costellazioni, a limited-edition collection of lamps by Duccio Trassinelli
On October 15, 2009 the Sitting & Seating exhibition will be inaugurated at Galleria Nilufar, in Via della Spiga 32, Milan. The vernissage will start at 6 p.m. It is an important occasion to compare two design generations and observe the work of two contemporary authors coping with wood. The exhibition will be open till November 14, from 10 a.m. to 7.30 p.m. (from Tuesday to Saturday) and from 3 to 7.30
p.m. on Mondays. The show will be held at the same time as Martino Gamper exhibition organised by Milan-located Triennale.
Gamper and Trassinelli have a gap of 25 years and bring forward different abilities, but they try to answer the same questions: how to interpret the use from an expressive point of view, how to spread freedom in a lived-in space, how to delete cliché and aesthetic stereotypes going along new paths. While being different as for age and background, they are both heading towards a deep, eclectic search, free from the hindrances of the present-day taste, with strong ideas as for design aspects linked with theoretical and social issues.
Sitting & Seating by Martino Gamper is a limited edition of three seats in oak, walnut and pinewood, created in just five specimens for each shape.
Costellazioni by Duccio Trassinelli is a collection of “lighting-up objects”, proposed in a limited edition and created according to his studies and sketches from the Seventies. The woods used go from pine to chestnut, to precious walnut and cherry. The lighting-up plant uses low-voltage electromagnetic contacts. Hydra has an arm whose movement starts from the ground and reaches 4 metres. Cetus is an arc-lamp with a 360-degree rotating basement. Cassiopea is an oscillating source, with an adjustable light reaching all directions. Trassinelli was born in Florence in 1945 and then studied at Istituto Superiore di Disegno Industriale in his hometown, where he then remained as a teacher of Planning Methodology for some ten years. In 1970 he founded the
A.R.D.I.T.I. study, a real starting point for a group analysis of a new idea of exploitation and shapes in the world of furniture. In that period he brought about some historical projects, such as the B.T. lamp, produced by Sormani in 1972 and now permanently exhibited at MOMA in New York; the Memoria armchair, awarded by Bolaffi Casa in 1973 as “month’s design” and now in Cassina Museum permanent collection; the Ponte lamp, reaching high quotations in international auctions.
During his career Trassinelli shifted within heterogeneous spaces from plants to the prefabricated buildings industry and the planning of electronic instruments, from city environment and furniture to contracts for private and public companies. Furthermore he entered several invention patents. At present Trassinelli is still working in the lightingup technical design, an area where he was amongst the first in experimenting low-voltage. The keywords of his work are method, pioneering, technology as poetic resource, no compromises, technical know-how, modern tradition, play, freedom in space.