Also at Moooi, but designed by Swedish quartet Front, were a full-size horse lamp and a boar carrying a tray on its back -- pieces that took things beyond romance and theatricality into the realms of the hysterically camp.
Elsewhere, what Giulio Cappellini likes to call "neo rustic" was having its moment with raw oak benches he'd commissioned from Jasper Morrison. It's certainly time to hide away the walnut -- light wood is back, as just one look at the new and cheaper Case range by British company SCP made clear. And then there is the enduring trend for appliques and patterns and general prettiness, of which Patricia Urquiola's Antibodi loungers for Moroso, laden with felty flowers, were the star. "It's that craft spirit," sobbed the New York-based designer Karim Rashid. "It looks like we're going back to that word that isn't even in my vocabulary: cosy."
Perhaps he gained some solace at the super-chic display at Established & Sons, the British company launched last September by Alasdhair Willis (who, speaking of fashion meeting furniture, is Mr. Stella McCartney). The star of the show was architect Amanda Levete's perfectly executed Drift bench (though the talking point was an orange crate reiterated in finest oak by Jasper Morrison, with a retail price of ?90. "It is pure poetry," said an Established representative, with a dead straight face. But he didn't say whether we were talking haiku or humorous verse).
The Milan Furniture Fair is where you see these ideas first, and as with the catwalks of Paris, you have to pay dearly for the real thing. But in furniture as in fashion, it's only a matter of time before the high street will pounce on the best. Expect pale-wood furniture, glossy chairs and a sofa system with interchangeable covers in a retail park near you soon. Not to mention the odd orange crate.
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