Working on marble

Work, work, work.

Our time is inevitably punctuated by more or less repeated gestures. Sometimes mechanical, sometimes creative and gratifying, they take up most of our day.

On looking at the various aspects of our everyday life, it seemed natural to focus on work, its actions and relations in their diverse possible declensions: work as manual effort, but also as ingenuity and imagination; as solitary concentration or as the profitable union of  different energies.

True to our mission to propose invaluable flexible objects, this year we present families of large meeting tables, modular tables, veritable work surfaces and writing-desks. Without forgetting game tables for recreation and socialization.

The group of designers who have worked with us for years – Studio Irvine, art director, Jasper Morrison, Konstantin Grcic, Naoto Fukasawa and Ross Lovegrove, with the addition of Philippe Nigro – has once again interpreted that concept with absolute originality, designing fresh and innovative objects to fit the necessities of contemporary living. Expanding surfaces, in contrast to diminishing thicknesses and silhouettes, pose a technical challenge. Always met by the expertise and skills passed down by our family.

The collection is presented in the Napoleonic hall of the Brera Fine Arts Academy, one of Italy’s most renowned and time-honoured schools of art. Thus we return to where our ancestors studied the art of sculpture in the early twentieth century, in a tribute to our origins and to Italian culture.

Costanza and Mario Marsotto

Work, as a necessary part of our daily lives, covers a vast range of activities relating to the intellect, manual skills, the individual and the group. So we need work tops, thinking tops, recreation tops, tops for standing, tops for sitting, private tops, group tops and reception tops. Hence this Working On Marble collection, with its diverse interpretations of surfaces as action tops.

Studio Irvine art director

Extempore subjects

The subject is the pillar of the sentence, supporting and signifying. In a furniture collection, the subject is the guiding thread that holds its creations together. The idea conveyed is that of a homogeneity, albeit in the heterogeneity of its signs.

In the Marsotto edizioni catalogue the impact of its collections, aside from the glaring quality of its design, lies in its dedication: not generically, but focused each time on a clear-cut functional purpose.

This year the theme is work, at home and at the office. Once again, a spontaneously enlightened approach to marble reveals its unexpected gifts and surprising softnesses. And when seen edgewise, it suggests unusual perspective effects.

The 2014 collection features large oval and round tables with support columns by Jasper Morrison; a rectangular, extruded table by Naoto Fukasawa, with a corner connection to create a large square, and legs at an angle of 45° to the top that lighten the volume edgewise; a desk with a top grooved to support a reading-stand, by Studio Irvine who, using the same legs, also designed a dressing table with a detachable mirror and grooves to contain cosmetics: a workstation dedicated to beauty; a computer top, comprising two elements joined by a pin, which rotates to create different configurations, designed by Konstantin Grcic; a reception desk, complete with housing for electrical cables and available in various heights, by Philippe Nigro; and two interpretations of a chess table, one with seats and the other monolithic, with a top in two finishes and a chequered, tone on tone effect, by Ross Lovegrove, who interprets the game here both as an interval and as strategic mind training.

But the real novelty of these projects lies in the theme of their new family, testifying to the special intelligence of Marsotto and Studio Irvine in spotting a different typology for each year’s collection.

Cristina Morozzi