DESIGN BEYOND CATEGORIES
In Como, between the town's silk heritage, its old crafts and contemporary collectible design, Draga & Aurel have built a studio that is no longer simply a place where collections are made. Paintings, prototypes, books, music and materials are part of a daily life in which the boundaries between private life and creative work have long since disappeared.
“Within half an hour we can visit a master who has been casting bronze for four decades, another who creates extraordinary upholstered furniture by hand, and a third who mixes pigments exactly as they were mixed generations ago.” For the duo, keeping this knowledge alive is part of their work, “not through nostalgia, but as something that can still evolve. Our work does not imitate Como; it absorbs its atmosphere.”
Resin, glass, metal, textile and pigment are not simply means of shaping objects: they often become the starting point of a process in which the material sets the direction. And when something goes wrong, they stop, look and wait. “Very often, the mistake turns out to be more interesting than the original idea.”
Among their upcoming projects, a special edition of the Soffio lamp will travel to Art d’Egypte in Cairo, and several collectible design pieces created with Galerie BSL will be presented at Nomad Abu Dhabi.
Translated excerpts from “Dizajn izvan kategorija”, by Tina Kovačiček.
