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Raised to squares
Raised in Ticino, Switzerland, and now living in Paris, Lisa Lubrini regularly travels to Como (Italy). This is where, since 2018, this thirty-year-old has been weaving, printing and sewing squares with graphic patterns in silk twill, under the Aenéis label. Introduced to handmade weaving as a teenager, this daughter of an educator and a schoolteacher studied fashion design in Milan and London. After internships at Alexander McQueen or Liberty of London and experiences at Hugo Boss or Napapijri, she ended up turning her back on these big houses. “I was demotivated and disoriented. They only talked to me about catching up trends, scale of production, costs and margins,” she says.
On a more modest scale, which suits him more, Aenéis draws his inspiration from frescoes and botanical plates, the work of brutalist or abstract architects, such as Richard Meier, or figures from the Bauhaus, such as the painter Josef Albers. “To tell the truth, I discovered Albers through his wife, Anni Albers, a textile designer. I love his minimalist approach and unique use of basic, geometric shapes. Squares, rectangles, you see them every day without paying attention… He manages to use them in subtle compositions that imprint your imagination. » The series of zincographies (lithography on zinc) Graphic Tectonic, that Albers undertook in 1941, thus nourished a square playing on rigor and optical illusion.
“I first drew, in pencil and then on a tablet, two white squares all in lines. I added a third, black, to highlight them » on a background in so-called color ” biscuit “, mix of cream, black and beige. “It took many attempts to get the colors to coexist, then find the right thickness of the lines and borders so that the print was clear and rich to look at. Both when the scarf is unfolded and when it is tied. » V. Pé.
Italy on his plate
Each great Italian tableware house tells, with its own signature, a know-how, a style or regional roots. Ginori 1735, for example. The Florentine porcelain maker, almost three hundred years old, ennobles the tables of La Botte and elsewhere with its splendid collections, notably the Oriente Italiano line, which combines oriental garden motifs and pastel tones. We can prefer, in the same house, the more contemporary spirit – even if the inspiration leans towards Greco-Roman art – of Il Viaggio di Nettuno, a selection of pieces imagined by the British designer Luke Edward Lobby.
Change of scenery with the Tuscan brand Popolo which signs A Tavola!, a colorful collaboration of chatty plates, in French or Italian in the text, with the Roman chef Eleonora Galasso. In English, this time, mischievous messages like (“I saw you crying in the disco”, or “It’s better to be late than ugly”) are hand-painted by the artist Gabriella Ferrazzano (Musæ Studio), on plates that she models, sold on the site of Ta-Daan, a Milanese collective that gives pride of place to revisited craftsmanship.
In a more bourgeois mood, the online store of Cabana, Italian lifestyle magazine founded by Martina Mondadori, has sourced ceramic plates handmade in Umbria and decorated with green, yellow, orange, pink or blue deckchair stripes. In this register of multicolored ceramics, Emporio Sirenuse markets bowls and plates made by Amalfi artisans, while speckled ceramics typical of Puglia are available on the Bottega Egnazia site. But the Transalpines do not have a monopoly on Italian-inspired tableware. Le Grassois Fragonard pays homage to “A Sicilian summer”, through its collection of fine porcelain plates printed with illustrations evoking Palermo or Catania, at prices as low as a Mediterranean breeze. S. May.
Beautiful dark one
In the world of jewelry, all in “brilliance,” “transparency” and “purity,” onyx cultivates its difference. Because, if certain variants – white, gray, green or orange – exist, it is mainly in its deep and opaque black version that the houses of Place Vendôme use this gem from the chalcedony family. Onyx, set on cameos since Antiquity, was indicated for making mourning jewelry, particularly across the Channel, in the Victorian era. In the 1920s and 1930s, it moved upmarket. In Paris, Cartier makes it a recurring element in its vocabulary: this stone borders white gold on rigorous clips and brooches, or depicts the spots of a panther. Today, the house on rue de la Paix continues to combine it with gold and diamonds, a recipe also followed at Van Cleef & Arpels. Dior, for its part, contrasts it with mother-of-pearl, while Repossi, in a more radical spirit, confronts it with other equally dark materials, such as gold made black – by plunging it into a bath of ruthenium – or titanium. V. Pé.
Alcove Secrets
Since 2018, design specialists Valentina Ciuffi and Joseph Grima have shaken up the Milan Furniture Fair by exhibiting, as part of their Alcova fair, several dozen emerging designers, publishers and institutions in unusual locations – a former hospital, a manufacturing plant. panettone, slaughterhouse… They are now extending the event through an online store, where lamps, tables, mirrors, vases… are offered from 70 to 11,000 euros. Collectible objects in small series signed by confidential creators who question the notion of good taste. There we discover astonishing ceramic sculptures by Hannah Lim, Anglo-Chinese inspired boxes with a manga aesthetic, Elements, a lamp by Adrian Cruz in translucent multi-colored resin straight out of a Florida nightclub, or a Holloway Li armchair in fiberglass and orange fabric with puffy seventies lines. A bold photograph of contemporary creation. Mr. God.
A bouquet of scrubland
Provence, spontaneously considered as an ocean of rosés, nevertheless hides a production of great red wines (around 10%) which have nothing to envy of the Bordeaux and Burgundy appellations. At Château des Sarrins, in the town of Saint-Antonin-du-Var, the vines flourish on limestone soils in the middle of scrubland rich in plant species. When we taste its Rouge secret 2018 vintage, made from five grape varieties, we find all the scents of its landscape: thyme, savory, rosemary, verbena, lavender, cypress… This Côtes-de-Provence is an invitation to travel through its lands. And when Mediterranean red rubs closer to the sea, as in Cassis, it is adorned with irresistible iodized and salty aromas. Coming from old vines over 60 years old, the Marquis de Fesques vintage, from Domaine du Bagnol, is a dazzling example. L.G.
Beating drum
After celebrating its twentieth anniversary in 2022 with a beautiful book published by Thames & Hudson, the Tambour, Louis Vuitton’s flagship watch, is beginning its transformation. Little by little, 80% of the existing offering in this range will disappear to attract more erudite collectors. In its new version, the model displays a thinner crown (reduced from approximately 13 millimeters to 8.3 millimeters), an integrated metal bracelet, a new three-hand movement (automatic winding), luminescent hands and a wording in French with a vintage spirit on the dial: it is no longer written “Swiss Made” but “Fab. in Switzerland”, as on certain watches from the 1940s to 1960s. A search for refinement as much as a demonstration of industrial power going hand in hand with an increase in price. The Tambour, in steel, yellow gold or pink gold, is also available, as here, in a two-tone version. V. Pé.