Objects that stay with us
The Object Edit
OBJECT 01
OBJECT 02
OBJECT 03
Painted Profile
Pocket Record
Travel Grooves
First blown for Venini in 1921, Vittorio Zecchin’s Veronese vase takes its profile from a glass vessel in Paolo Veronese’s Annunciation of 1580. Mouth-blown in Murano, it turned a small painted detail into one of Venini’s most recognisable forms.
Frank Smythson created the Panama diary in 1908 as a book light enough to travel in a pocket. Its cross-grain leather cover and exceptionally thin paper (later developed into pale blue Featherweight paper) replaced the weight of a desk diary with a portable record.
Rimowa introduced its first aluminium suitcase in 1937 and added vertical grooves in 1950, drawing on the metal surfaces of early aircraft. The lines gave the suitcase an identity that remains recognisable as its surface accumulates the dents and scratches of travel.
OBJECT 04
OBJECT 05
OBJECT 06
Repeated Face
Anatomical Support
Visible Tension
In 1952, Piero Fornasetti began altering a portrait of opera singer Lina Cavalieri found in a 19th-century magazine. Across hundreds of Tema e Variazioni plates, he concealed, divided and rearranged her face, turning one image into an expanding system of variations.
Designed by Carlo Mollino in 1949 and first made in 1950, the Vertebra table turns the structure of a human spine into a support for glass. Only two examples were realised before Zanotta introduced its first serially produced version in 2026.
René Herbst’s 1927 Sandows chair replaces conventional upholstery with elastic cords stretched across a chrome-plated tubular steel frame. Petite Friture’s 2026 reissue preserves the same structural idea almost a century later.
Further Looking
FROM THE ARCHIVE
The first Object Edit brought together six objects from different decades, materials and uses. Each chosen for the detail that made it worth another look.
desıgn
Seen through Magelier, Milan Design Week is most interesting at this point of overlap: where fashion leaves the body, enters the room and becomes part of the way we live with objects.
DESIGN
Nearly thirty years after its debut, the bag returns with a new reading by Fendi Chief Creative Officer Maria Grazia Chiuri.
NOTES
Designed by Oscar-winning film, stage and interior designer Catherine Martin, Rhapsody is one of five Art Deco-inspired rugs in her second collection for Designer Rugs. Hand-knotted in Tibetan wool in Nepal, it shows how a carpet can shape a setting—a role another Martin-designed carpet later took on at Prada’s Fall/Winter 2025 show.