Art and Design Inspiration
Top 10 designers at the Salone del Mobile 2023
Salone del Mobile 2023
The Salone del Mobile is one of the most important events in the world of design and interiors. Held in Milan, Italy, Salone del Mobile is back for 2023 with a new set of talented designers showcasing their latest work.
First established in 1961 as a platform for exhibiting Italian furniture and design, Salone del Mobile has since grown to become an international showcase for the best and most innovative design from around the world.
Across Milan a wide range of products will be on show, from furniture and lighting to accessories and textiles. The event is an opportunity for both established and emerging designers to display their work to an international audience, with many using the art and design event as a launchpad for new innovative products, as well as sharing the goal to bridge functionality with contemporary art within their work.
Our Top 10 Designers
Manu Crotti
Manu Crotti is an artist based in Crema, Italy. Her work has always been linked with memories, represented by little objects, images and memorabilia of her travels around the world. She casts several layers of epoxy resin to enclosure these precious memories, creating the illusion of a floating collage to create functional products such as tables, cupboards, mirrors and room dividers. Since 2011, Manu Crotti has been working with Galleria Rossana Orlandi and showcasing her innovative products and designs in exhibitions around the world.
Vibrazioni estive low table by Manu Crotti
Mingyu Xu Studio
Mingyu Xu, the head designer at Mingyu Xu Studio based in London, re-imagines furniture and lighting by incorporating cultural heritage and traditional techniques into contemporary design. He began to research and explore bamboo weaving in 2016, with his aim to refresh ancient bamboo weaving techniques to create interesting, innovative products and furniture in modern spaces.
Parallel Bamboo Chandelier by Mingyu Xu Studio
Lucia Massari
Born in Venice, Italy, Lucia Massari’s multidisciplinary practice frequently incorporates collaborations with local artisans and ranges from innovative product design to installations and performance. For Salone, Lucia collaborated with Murano glassmakers Barbini Specchi Veneziani resulting in a unique and playful lamp collection described as ‘Candy-Like’ lights.
Toppings Light by Lucia Massari
Misha Kahn
Misha Kahn’s work is a combination of design and sculpture and explores a wide range of media in large and small scale. His way of working flows between hand sketching, watercolour painting and clay sculpting. For the 2023 Salone del Mobile Milan Misha has created 50 mystical book covers displayed at the temporary Apartamento Bookshop, some in puffy cast foam, others embedded with alien like blobs.
Chris Wolston
Chris Wolston transforms functional objects into artful and whimsical fabricated work. Based in New York, Wolston’s work ranges from furniture and lighting to installation and sculpture. He effortlessly blends traditional techniques and materials with contemporary innovation, creating original postmodern design. Seen at Doppia Firma at Salone del Mobile 2023 is his Twiggy Chair, which was designed by Wolston to impersonate the character of the humans that sit on it.
Twiggy Chair by Chris Wolston
Jonathan Anderson
The creative director of Loewe, Jonathan Anderson, is going back to basics with his new designs that are on show at the latest Salone del Mobile, focusing on a humble home object, the chair – but with a modern design twist. His pieces are decorated in a variety of unusual ways, some with ribbons and some wrapped in fur, however Anderson is careful not to hinder the original structure of the chairs and so they are still fully functional. Jonathan is originally from Northern Ireland and is the founder of JW Anderson.
Loewe Chair by Jonathan Anderson
Alberto Caliri
Incorporating unusual shapes, bursts of color, and a sense of irony and lightness, Alberto Caliri creates one of the most memorable debuts at Salone del Mobile 2023. As the Creative Director of Missoni, Caliri creates a surreal setting using pouf seats that are sporadically placed in a large room echoing his funky design patterns.
Poufs by Alberto Caliri
Jonathan Bocca
Italian sculptor Jonathan Bocca crafts tactile furniture and lighting from mix media, often using paper-mache, metal and wood in his pieces. He views his sculptures as creature-objects and aims to rethink the relationship between person and environment, rediscovering it to be more intimate, where the human exchanges his needs with objects he is surrounded by.
Furniture Sculptures by Jonathan Bocca
Xavier Lust
Xavier is a sculptor and furniture designer based in Brussels. He is known for his unique techniques to shaping metal into furniture. His Virgo piece is structure which becomes a bookcase that plays with asymmetry. The sculptural form of Virgo makes it usable both on the wall and, above all, as centre-room. Virgo was shown as part of Driade’s stand in an impressive and eye-catching display, with other playful, contemporary design pieces as part of Salone del Mobile 2023.
Virgo bookshelf by Xavier Lust
Raw Color Studio
Christoph Brach and Daniera ter Haar are the creators of Raw Color who blend the fields of Graphic Design, Photography and Product Design at their Eindhoven based studio.
The exhibited the Loop and Link sofas that evoke a feeling of nostalgia for childhood’s past with their emphasis on creating an organic and comforting environment with their Neotenic Design.
Neotenic design is an innovative approach to creating interiors that creates a positive emotion response through the combination of soft lines, sweet colors, and plush materials in curved rounded and cylindric forms within furniture.
Vibrant Loop sofas by Raw Color Studio
The Importance of Functional Design
To sum up the top designers showing work at the Salone del Mobile 2023 exhibition, we see the common thread connecting product functionality with art to create innovative and visually striking products.
Similarly to these designers, Sonya, the lead designer and founder of Sonya Winner of connecting Rug Studio, creates ‘floor art’ in the form of luxury rugs, seen in our Vibrant Contemporary Rug Collection. Sonya’s functional design approach is seen in the careful consideration of the needs and preferences of our customers, ensuring our contemporary rugs are durable and long-lasting, yet soft and comfortable to walk on whilst celebrating modern design!
The Lichen Greige Rug by Sonya Winner
The Importance of Colourful Design
Many of the designers featured above use colour to communicate a message or transform an ordinary object into the extraordinary. For example, Mingyu Xu’s selective colour integration with the material of bamboo transforms his products into a new modern variation of the traditional bamboo weaving technique. The same applies to Jonathan Anderson’s chairs, where he adds vibrant colours and textures to a simple object with a simple function, and completely re-invents them into marvellous pieces.
Color plays a crucial role in transforming a product or design by influencing the way people perceive and interact with it. Color evokes different emotions, creates different moods, and conveys different meanings, making it an essential element of design which is carefully considered with Sonya Winner’s modern rugs. Color has the power to transform an environment, space or room, which is also demonstrated in the luxury rugs designed by Sonya Winner.
The Wave Rug by Sonya Winner
If you’re feeling inspired by the beautiful modern designs on show at the Salone del Mobile 2023 and would like some ideas on how you can bring contemporary functionality into your home, take a look at our Vibrant Contemporary Rug Collection and introduce a luxury rug to your home.
With designer rugs suitable for any space, try out a selection of our modern rug designs and see how they look in your own home with our free visualisation service! Just contact us directly or use the easy to follow ‘Visualize’ button along the banner at the top of the page.
