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This is the final monthly design news round-up, so we’ve made it a bumper edition. As well as previewing some shows that will be this year’s Salone del Mobile in Milan, there’s pyjamas from Grayson Perry and Greek mythology reinterpreted by conceptual artist Maurizio Cattelan. Enjoy.
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Cattelan’s odyssey
If you’ve followed the case of the stolen gold toilet or loved the 2019 artwork Comedian – a banana taped to a wall – then Maurizio Cattelan will need no introduction. The Italian conceptual artist has been provoking and delighting audiences in equal measure since the 1990s. Cattelan has a new show, Bones, opening at the Gagosian in London in April and, to run alongside this, a set of posters will appear in Tube stations. For these, Cattelan has used the tropes of classic Greek myths to portray the trials of modern life. So next time you’re on the central line, look out for Sisyphus with a shopping trolley or Atlas dressed for the 9-5 with the weight of the world on his back. An exhibition of Cattelan’s drawings and watercolours will run concurrently at Burlington Arcade in London and a book of his art, Leftovers: The Bonami’s Cattelans, will also be publisehd this month.
Maurizio Cattelan’s Bones opens at Gagosian on 8 April
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Loewe’s cup of tea
Fashion house Loewe’s Salone del Mobile 2025 exhibition is a must for fans of tablescaping and art. The Spanish brand is showing Loewe Teapots at the Palazzo Citterio for the annual furniture fair, a collection of 25 pots created by artists, architects and designers including Patricia Urquiola, Edmund de Waal, David Chipperfield and Rosemarie Trockel. Each has brought their own unique style to the tea table staple. From Trockel’s wonky tea urn redolent of local cafes to Takayuki Sakiyama’s elegant white twisted ceramic vessel, these pots tell a story of tea’s cultural legacy. Teapots are making a surprise comeback among millennials, but this exhibition is also a vivid reminder of how the everyday can be beautifully reimagined. Loewe will show tea, caddies coasters and candles at Salone and the house signature tea – made with Postcard Teas – will also be available for your own teatime ritual.
Teapots by Loewe is at Palazzo Citterio, Milan, from 7-13 April. Loewe house tea is available online from 7 April
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Midcentury chic
Lucienne Day was one of the most influential designers of the 50s and 60s, creating textiles, wallpapers and ceramics that came to epitomise the post-war British interiors style. Now Mini Moderns, the British design studio that specialises in midcentury interiors, has dug through Day’s personal collection of textiles and wallpapers at The Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester and brought some of her quintessential designs back into production – the designs known as Provence and Syncopation. Provence, with its abstract shapes, was one of the three wallpapers that Day designed for the 1951 Festival of Britain.
Mini Moderns worked closely with the Robin and Lucienne Day Foundation on the project and founder, trustee and chair Paula Day says she’s thrilled with the results. “Less well-known than her textiles, her wallpapers are equally brilliant mid-century designs which look perfectly at home in today’s interiors. Mini Moderns’ meticulous attention to every tiny detail has resulted in beautifully authentic new productions which bring these historic designs back to vibrant life.”
Lucienne Day wallpapers by Mini Moderns are available online
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Futuristic paint
While researching eco paints for his home renovation project, designer and inventor Joe Doucet started thinking about a more fundamental problem. “I wanted my own home to be as green as possible,” says Doucet. “I was researching the effect of colour on a building’s temperature and realised the significant impact dark vs light colours can have on a building’s temperature. It struck me that in an ideal scenario a building could change colour just like leaves change with the seasons on trees.”
After much experimentation, Doucet has managed to develop a paint that is dark grey below 25ºC and white at temperatures higher than that. “The colour changes almost instantly at that temperature, so a building is either one colour or the other.”
As a rule of thumb, a house-owner could save an average of 20-30% of the energy used to heat and cool a building, passively and without the need to physically repaint a structure each season. Doucet, who has a patent pending on the formulation, says: “I’m very excited by the sustainability aspect of this paint, but I also find the idea that built environments can change with the seasons quite poetic.”
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Making the cut
Samuel Alexander’s therapist was the first person to suggest he turn his hand to carving. At the time, Alexander was experiencing a deep depression but, as he says in his new book, The Green Wood Carver: “I knew that from my first push of the knife into wood that I had unveiled something truly healing.”
He is now a full-time green wood carver – a craft worker who uses wet wood, usually to make vessels and spoons. As well as a strong instagram following, Alexander’s work has been promoted by British clothes brand Toast as part of their New Makers initiative. He has also started running courses to introduce other beginners to carving and woodwork, always with craft’s therapeutic value at its heart. It’s this idea that has led him to write this how-to book, which acts as an introduction to the practical side of tools, materials and safety. But it’s also a “why-do”, an explanation of how carving makes him feel and how mindful work can help you work through dilemmas. Or, as Alexander puts it in his introduction: “It was as if the slow, spiralling shavings of wood were pirouetting away my troubles and transporting me into a calm, harmonious state, like a walk through a forest.”
The Green-Wood Carver: Slow Woodcraft for Beginners is out now (Skittledog, £16.99)
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Get the Liberty look
Leading British retailer Liberty London is launching its 150th anniversary year celebrations with a very special collaboration. The arts and crafts department store has worked with Grayson Perry to develop an original fabric design. The floral pattern is inspired by Shirley Smith, a new muse persona created by Perry for his upcoming exhibition. After a mental health episode, Shirley Smith now believes she is the heir to London’s Wallace Collection, one of the most important gallerys of decorative and fine art in the world (the Perry show Delusions of Grandeur is held at the Wallace Collection). The artist’s new works – some handcrafted and some created with digital technology – are meant to decorate an imaginary home and the show includes ceramics, tapestries and portraits. For the exhibition launch, Shirley’s Liberty fabric will be available as pyjamas and a scarf. In May, you’ll also be able to buy cushions covered in Shirley’s delightful design.
Grayson Perry: Delusions of Grandeur runs until 26 October at The Wallace Collection. Perry’s fabric in a limited edition Liberty collection is available now. Interior cushions launch in May
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Urns to die for
For those who associate Italian houseware brand Alessi with chic kitchens, the new project presented next week during Fuorisalone, the events around Salone, may come as a surprise. The Last Pot is an exhibition of funeral urns designed by creatives including architect Daniel Libeskind and designers Michael Anastassiades and Audrey Large. The project was conceived during a dinner party in 2010 at Alberto Alessi’s house when the journey from pot to urn, and the idea of how the purpose of vessels change during a lifetime, was the table chat. The resultant receptacles are beautiful meditations on memory, time and the circle of life, such as Naoto Fukasawa’s earthernware house or Anastassiades’ egg-inspired container. Long time Alessi collaborator Philippe Starck’s metal, stylised bone-shaped urn would look very much at home next to his Juicy lemon squeezer. The exhibition catalogue will also feaure an appendix containing recipes connected to funeral rituals around the world, from the Sancocho soup of Santo Domingo to the Indian Kheer.
The Last Pot is at Biblioteca Ostinata, Milan, 8-12 April
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Vanessa Bell show
If you missed the Vanessa Bell show at MK Gallery in Milton Keynes, there’s an updated version coming to Charleston. New loans for this exhibition include door panels created by Bell while holidaying in West Wittering, Sussex in 1915, as well as the painted door of her attic studio at Charleston, both of which are being shown for the first time. There’ll also be a comprehensive display of Bell’s book covers for the novels of her sister, Virginia Woolf.
Before she moved to Charleston, Bell was a director at Omega Workshops, an artist and designer-run studio which played an influential role in interior design in the 1910s. One of Bell’s best-known works for Omega was the Maud fabric – named after Lady Maud Cunard, the workshop’s patron.
Darren Clarke, head of collections, research and exhibitions at Charleston, says: “The exhibition really helps to shine new light on Bell’s life, on her art and design practice and prove, if proof were needed, what an important and influential figure she is in British modern art.”
Vanessa Bell: A World of Form and Colour is at Charleston until 21 September
