Baccarat shines at Milan Furniture Fair
The experimental work at Milan Furniture Fair always offers a refreshing/provocative change of pace but this year provided a particularly fascinating contrast in the form of two separate exhibitions sponsored by the same company, Baccarat. The first, Baccarat Highlights, which was installed in the Palazzo Morando on Via Sant'Andrea in the swank Montenapoleone shopping district, displayed new products from a galaxy of superstar designers that included Philippe Starck, Arik Levy, Jaime Hayon and Yann Kersalé.
Of course, Baccarat is a luxury goods manufacturer, so you don't look to them for sensible swivel-arm desk lamps.
Meanwhile, around the corner on Via della Spiga, another Baccarat-related show provoked no such ambivalence.
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Under the direction of the London designers Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby, the ECAL students, whose program is run by Augustin Scott de Martinville of the Swiss design office Big-Game, riffed on Baccarat's classic Harcourt crystal goblet, turning it into playful, toy like objects or adding slyly practical components, like a metal collar that turns the goblet into a vase, or a hinged lid that produces the world's fanciest Mason jar.