Published on : Wednesday, January 15, 2014
The collaboration between Luca Nichetto and the Mjölk gallery started during the first visit of the Venetian designer in Canada, where, taking the suggestion of his friend Eero Koivisto he visited the Mjölk gallery, where he met with the gallerists John Baker and his wife Juli Daoust.
The warm and elegant environment, fitted out with finely crafted objects from all over Japan and Scandinavia, put Nichetto immediately at ease. During pleasant conversations with John and Juli, their common passion for design and detail have led them to think of a collaboration, which resulted in a product specifically designed for their gallery, along with a solo exhibition containing some of the projects, the designer, has created in his career.
The product created for Mjölk is the coffee set called “Sucabaruca”. It is a project that, from the start, has been involving people from different cultures and countries: Juli and John who, with passion, collect and distribute in Canada products mainly from Scandinavia and Japan; the Canadian ceramist Alissa Coe, who made the prototypes, skillfully interpreting our project; Lera Moiseeva, designer and artist of Russian origin, but New Yorker by adoption, who contributed to the development of the coffee set in collaboration with Nichetto´s studios in Sweden and Italy; and Elena Freddi, collaborator at the studio in Stockholm, who took care of the set up for the exhibition “Luca Nichetto + Mjölk” in Toronto. All these people have enriched the project, making it an extraordinary melting pot of ideas and energy on an international scale.
The “Sucabaruca” coffee set is rich in cultural and formal references that come from the influences of several people involved in the project. The main cone-shaped body is reminiscent of “Carmencita”, the famous character created by Armando Testa in 1966 for the tv show“Carosello”. The patterns, hand-engraved by hand in the ceramic, are meant to emphasize the uniqueness of the pieces, as well as for the tray, manufactured using material such as Canadian maple wood, which always reveal new and unique patterns when carved. Just like in a game, the set elements can be stacked and combined as desired, indulging in the different personalities offered by 3 colour palettes, from total white, inspired by the fashion designer Martin Margiela, to pastel tones, characteristic of Japanese architectures, and eventually pop colours, a tribute to the eclectic artist Jean-Paul Goude.
Tags: Eero Koivisto, John Baker, Juli Daoust, Luca Nichetto, Mjölk gallery, Nichetto
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