While cleaning up a family property and decluttering the past, I found the draft of my father’s first furniture catalog, put together some time around 1961.
So what?
Ok, I spent my life hearing that pop was big at dreaming big and that his mind went fast forward. Still, as it usually happens with company histories, words take the shape of emptiness, by losing their original concrete content. But this very first catalog draft tells it all.
The 29-year-old boy had something very clear in mind, that was ahead of 30 years.
Besides presenting industrial high end furniture, i.e. containers that were machine-made and had a bunch of add-ons (drawers, doors, tilt-doors, etc.) – which was also big news – the catalog setting is quite unusual for the time.
1) Designers first. In 1961 there was no such thing as Archistars: at most, Gio Ponti and
such were considered maestri. Still, Luigi thought at some point they would become the pivotal element of a company. So, the catalog is split in a few sections, each dedicated to a different designer. In this case, just for a start, Gianni Songia, Luigi Sormani, Studio ABC (Achilli, Brigidini, Canella).
2) A concept of “total living”. The catalog encompasses modular furniture, freestanding pieces, functional pieces (opening tables), chairs AND lamps and carpets. Opening the path to further lines of accessories. As a matter of fact, by the end of the Sixties, Sormani manufactured wooden, metal and plastic furniture; kitchens, and accessories of all kinds, from ashtrays, coat hangers and bar trolleys to sculptural low voltage and marble lamps.
3) An international spirit. Long before foreign markets were considered as the survival factor for many Italian companies, Sormani was looking at a few role models, like Scandinavian design, German industrial concepts and the state-of-the-art products of Airborne. In the catalog, the final section is dedicated to “concessioni estere”, foreign licenses, namely of Scandinavian furniture and, as Luigi was hoping, Airborne furniture (a handwritten note in pencil on the last page).
What about today? One may argue that nowadays the idea of a “collection” has been surpassed by the flood of Instagram images and such. It all looks scattered and volatile. Still, even Chiara Ferragni, Blogger Extraordinaire, went from a mere “(Blonde) Salad” to an actual Collection.
So, in your view, what would a catalog of the future (ok…not necessarily on paper…) look like today?
