From vase to flower

In recent years designers, architects and artists have brought new shapes and materials to the flower vases. Used on a daily basis for thousands of years it has been interpreted afresh to fit in with the contemporary landscape.

Sixty of the best international designers (Ron Arad, Sergio Asti, Mario Botta, Andrea Branzi, Fernando & Humberto Campana, Julien Carretero, Pierre Charpin, Matali Crasset, Michele De Lucchi with Elisa Gargan, Marco Ferreri, Doriana and Massimiliano Fuksas, Martí Guixé, Jaime Hayon, Giulio Iacchetti, Angelo Mangiarotti, Enzo Mari, Alessandro Mendini, Jasper Morrison, Fabio Novembre, Denis Santachiara, Ettore Sottsass and Paolo Ulian among others), established masters and young, up and coming artists have taken on this object, no longer simply decorative but destined itself to host the designs of nature (flowers, of course) in all their wonder and glory.

The outcome is an inventory of endless ways of addressing a design challenge, from the elegance and beauty of the pieces by Linde Burkhardt and Nicolas Le Moigne to the more functional approach of Andrea Branzi, or the surprising inventions of Martí Guixé and Matali Crasset and the classic pieces by Enzo Mari and Ettore Sottsass. The book contains sixty designs that explore materials and composition, while juxtaposing these with the need to hold and show off the flowers.

Published on the occasion of the exhibition of the same name, curated by Beppe Finessi, at the Museo Poldi Pezzoli in Milan in 2011 as an exhibition project by Inventario.