Nearly a month has passed and I am still pondering about what, if anything, to write about this year’s Milan Furniture fair. I’ve been going for nearly 15 years and for the first time I’m very much underwhelmed, Maybe it’s my fragile state of mind, maybe I’ve just seen it all, maybe my concience is now seriosuly kickking in and I wonder if we need any more stuff in this world.
I’ll ponder for another few days and will write whatever I remember.
To be continued…
It’s been too long and trust me, it’s not for lack of tat out there. Here is something I saw at the Salone Sattelite this year in Milan. I will not name and shame the designer….but what the F*** is that?? I have a terrible suspicion that it might be a clock. 
As you may have read below, I have officially given up on ever looking at the BBC weather forecast again. When visiting Milan recently I kept a firm eye on it, but while the BBC said ‘HEAVY RAIN’….we had this:
Maybe some rain would have been preferable!!!
About a couple of months ago I was sitting on the Circle Line on my way to the Design Museum for a meeting when I was literally sitting next to Daniel Charney without noticing it. Only when I was getting off at Tower Bridge I noticed he was getting off at the same stop, he was on his way to the Design Museum too. So, while walking over Tower Bridge (it’s still exciting to walk across that bridge, even after 18 years in London) he told me about a project he was workingon with the British Council, a newspaperduring the Milan Furniture Fair called The Incidental. He asked me to contribute so for any of you who might have missed it: here are the installments:
It’s a strange feeling! For the first time in oh, 15 years, I haven’t got a plane ticket to Milan for the annual Circus that is the ‘Salone del Mobile’. I’m on Expedia, Opodo, Easy Jet and Ryanair websites daily and know the prices and times of flights in and out of Milan almost by heart…yet, I simply can’t commit myself to pressing that ‘CONFIRM’ button just yet. The invites are coming in by mail, E-mail, facebook and every other possible way but I am still resisting (for now).
Maybe it’s because I don’t actually like Milan that much (I have lived there for a couple of years many many moons ago) or because I feel they should just do the whole thing only once every two years, like Euroluce. After all (I’m getting all eco warrior on you) we should try and be a little more considerate about the amount of stuff we produce, and we all know that Milan, while being full of good design, is also full of crap!
I have found a new obsession: The Weather. It is beautiful and sunny here in London and I hear it’s beautiful in Milan too, but according to the BBC, that’s it with the nice weather for Milan. I can cope with the rain in London, but Italy in the rain, or worse, Italy in cold rain, terrible. What does amuse me though is the sight of Italians in the rain, especially Italian men. Never a hair out of place, immaculate suit, nice brown shoes…and rain. Well, it makes me smile!
It’s quite in the office, the phone doesn’t ring, very few E-mails coming in. It appears the world has come to a standstill. Is it possible that EVERYBODY is in Milan and I am not?
So, I went out at lunchtime yesterday to get myself a nice big umbrella. I looked completely stupid, bright sunny day, people in shorts & T-shirt and me with an umbrella.
Should I stay or should I go?
I am weak and I’ve given in…I’m in Milan, but since my flight was now twice as expensive as it would have been had I booked it weeks ago I will now have to do these few days on a very strict budget. After all our Great British Pound is just not what it used to be and thanks to our good Chancellors budget yesterday, I just go 2.5cents per pound less.
My first stop will be the local supermarket where I stock up on prosciutto, formaggio, pomodori and a bit of pane, I mean how difficult can it be to make a simple Panino and that’s what I have been living of for the last 10 years in Milan anyway. I always wondered what Italians would eat if they didn’t have wheat, cheese or tomato. Not much!
One other option was to bring sealable bags and just fill them up at various events. There are always a few Parmesan Cheeses and Salamis lying around…I’ll just have to be subtle, but that should be no problem, ‘subtle’ is my middle name!
Should I stay or ….sono qui!
I think I got myself a suntan yesterday. So much for the BBC weather forecast of heavy rain in Milan. I think this is the last time I will consult the BBC website for that. Useless!!
Now that I’m actually here, I’m glad I decided to come. In response to the usual ‘So, what have you seen so far that’s good’ question you ask everyone you come across in Milan, someone said ‘I think this year is not so much about the products, it’s more about the people’. Good answer I thought and on reflection, hasn’t it always been about the people? Obviously Design is why we are all here, but is it Design that makes us all come back year after year.
We all know that it’s tough to make it in our industry but one thing we all have in common is the honest passion we share for what we do and Milan is a great excuse to leave our daily routine behind and enjoy ourselves.
Haha, I’ve come over all philosophical now, well, before I think too much I think it’s time to hit the town!!
See you next year
Hello and welcome to the new blog from theo, the new alter-ego of Thorsten van Elten. We have a lot of things planned for the next few months so please be patient with us as we are working hard. In the meantime, here is a little picture I recently took in Italy. Enjoy.
Once in a while I check my Internet links to see where people who visit my site have come from, so today I was very amused to see that 822 visitors in the last month have come to me via a Spanish porn site called putalocura.com (no, I’m not going to put a direct link there… I couldn’t possibly encourage that sort of thing). I obviously had to scroll down a while to see where or what could possible be featured on a site like that…and on page two…there it was… Still Life. So, any Spaniard buying a Still Life in the near future….I know where you have been! Dirty!
Anyway, in the name of research I looked a bit further and found this little tresure of a website, The London Banana Project (www.londonbananas.com). It’s a site full of photos of banana skins found in the streets of London. Brilliant.
At least I can see why they would feature Bananas on their site!
I went home to Germany last weekend for my mum’s birthday and as mine is two days later I made a long weekend of it. As it ws a round birthday for my mum, the whole family was in town, all uncles, aunts etc. On the Friday we made a little excursion to the Insel Hombroich, a great little place. It’s next to a small River (sorry, the name escaped me) so all very lush and green. I’m not going to bore you with all the details, it’s basically a museum which is situated in a large park and separated into various building, each built specifically to house parts of the collection. Have a look for yourself on their website (sorry, it’s all in German). Here are a few pictures I took. Enjoy.
PS: Be warned, since I bought a new camera recently I have turned into a right little amateur photographer, snapping away. I will bore you with more of my pics soon.
Tat - a term, found particularly in England, referring to anything which appears shabby, cheap, and tasteless.
Welcome to my new section, ‘Thorsten says tat’. No further explanation required.
Part 1 – His and Hers Chair by Fabio Novembre for Casamania.
Trade fairs are a never ending source of entertainment for me (well, once I get over the initial shock of being confined to a few square metres in a giant air conditioned hall where outside the world could have ended and you would know nothing about it). So I spent my weekend at Pulse in London’s Earls Court Exhibition Centre and it wasn’t all that bad. In fact, I actually quite enjoyed myself.
The stand next to me was award winning Kalthleen Hills who as usual had a great looking stand (as you can see) as well as great products (obviously). All of her cards/brochures were hung on small nails all over the back and side wall of her stand (which by the way drove me crazy during the set up, all that hammering). To our amusement she overheard a couple of ladies talking about her products and stand saying: ‘ She should have used better nails’.
So apparently my moon is in aquarius today which is the opposite side of the zodiac (I read that in the newspaper I found on the tube this morning). They advised me that this will slow me down and and I might not be very productive today. Damn, what excuse am I going to use tomorrow???