A clock, side table and mirror are part of Estensioni, the first collection from the new company born of Car-met’s metalworking know-how. A young brand of metal home furnishing accessories, Formae represents a typically Italian story: behind it, a family manufacturing company with extensive know-how in the field of metalworking, which combines with the desire of the new generation to provide a different product vision, interpreted through a new, design-oriented sensibility.
The symbol of this change in perspective is its first collection, Estensioni, a keyword which fully explains the idea behind the brand, founded as a genuine extension of Car-met. As art director Leonardo Fortino explains, “Estensioni defines a new approach to design arising from a changed point of view. Behind Formae and the new collection is not, indeed, a technical effort, so much as an effort in terms of imagination: the manufacturing technology remains the same, but it is used to design and create more colourful, simple and youthful objects. Paradoxically, we could say that the product is the same, simply thought of in a different manner:it is the ideal transposition of a metal carpentry into a pop context.”
Leonardo Fortino is the young artistic director who, alongside Laura Tramonti – the manager and owner of the brand – defined the parameters of Formae: a world which reinterprets the company’s manufacturing capacity through the creation of furnishings and accessories with clean, rigorous lines, softened by the use of a lively and vibrant colour palette.
The selection of products on display below – the Otto clock, the Hip Hop side table and the Loop mirror – all feature circular forms, used in a functional, decorative and ironic manner, generating different design results each time.
Otto is the clock designed by Leonardo Fortino which reinterprets the traditional pendulum clock in a contemporary manner: it takes up its formal archetype, but subverts its dimensions and functionality. Made from steel and solid wood, it features a large circular face embellished with a brass winding key, which emphasises the dimension of the passage of time. The large lower cavity, divided into shelves, is able to hold books and mementos.
Hip Hop, from design team Lucio Curcio and Luca Binaglia, is made of a pair of round steel tables of different heights, joined together by a slot which allows the parts to be combined. Essential in their forms – reminiscent of the skilful folds of origami – the Hip Hop pair of tables creates an interplay of full and empty, where each element complements the other and gives life to a small piece of furniture with various different combinations and uses. Loop is the mirror with a metaphysical inspiration, designed by Valerio Ciampicacigli: the metal semi-circle which functions as a hanger is reflected in the mirror, creating a complete circle, in an optical illusion which makes the real dimension complementary and indistinguishable from the reflected one.
