In 2005, the National Palace Museum (NPM) in Taiwan and Alessi in Italy started an ongoing design collaboration around the idea of “Third Culture: East meets West”. The museum, considered the “Louvre of Orient,” wanted to raise awareness on the international scene in support of its new XXI century image. In 2007, Stefano Giovannoni and Rumiko Takeda designed the “Family of Mr.Chin” series in which each piece represents a specific household function: kitchen timer, salt & pepper set and egg cup.
The latest collection, called OrienTales, was first debuted at the Macef fair in Milan this past January. It includes toy-store worthy items such as a Lily Pond sushi set, Banana Kid sugar bowl, and Lily Bird soy sauce container.
They also teamed up with gli ori to publish “OrienTales: Eastern stories through western eyes,” which chronicles the design project from start to finish. Inspirational photos of Taiwan are juxtaposed against the final ceramic designs of Giovannoni and Takeda. The book also features an introduction by designer Alessandro Mendini:
Taking pop concepts as a point of departure for some time now, Stefano Giovannoni has been devising a range of small useful characters for Alessi, an animation of images, metaphors of tools, organized according to genera and animal, human and plant species, and displaying the qualities of games and fairy tales. A narrator, a devisor of design stories, a seducer, an inventor of worlds that are polite, cheerful and suited to the agreeability of his audience. Worlds of typologies for sophisticated household uses, but also conceived with the knowledge of a gastronomist, of someone who is deeply familiar with food ceremonies because he practices them. The experience of the small new characters, which arose out of the youthful energy of taiwan, is a very interesting case of methodology. It marks the creation not only of a new language but also of a new approach to design. His new crowd of small chinese, who are obliging by nature, stems from the inspiration, from the matrix of an icon, the symbol or mascot created for the national palace museum in taiwan: Smiling Mr. Chin.
[via renaissance chambara]
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