Created for Bisazza by designer James Hayon, Pixel Ballet (pictured) has been one of this year’s hits at the Salone. Based in Venice, Bisazza have a stable of designers working exclusively in mosaic, producing lush traditional Mediterranean-style works to understated contemporary pieces and everything in between.
Hayon’s main piece, Pinocchione, is really big. It’s as though a giant Qee has decided to settle down in the middle of a furniture exhibition. In fact, that’s not far from the truth, aside from designing various furniture collections - storage units, vases, tables and lamps - Hayon has also painted in a Picasso-inspired style on a range of Qees. Unlike the pocket-size Qees, this impressive piece at Salone has serious presence, owning the space it inhabits as it straddles the sparkling mosaic-adorned fence between kitsch and pixel-chic.
Elsewhere at Salone, demonstrating the changing climate with regard to eco-awareness, is DIY Kyoto’s Wattson. In the past 12 months, taking responsibility for our environmental impact has become a fashionable priority. That’s fine of course. We should indeed give a damn about the world we live in. So designers Greta Corke, Jon Sawdon Smith and Richard Woods, have created a device that manages to measure the amount of electricity being used in the home at a given moment.
Their brilliant little box dynamically and visually quantifies energy usage. It sounds quite dull, but in practice Wattson does its job whilst looking like a pseudo-futuristic objet d’art; transmogrifying the power we use into numbers and colours, and driving home the immediate impact of our energy use on both our pockets and the world around us.
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