Oltrarno Grey Tray 35

Eclectic designer Nino Basso and his granddaughter Cristina Colonnello, an advertising graphic designer, are the heart and mind of Design Center 1991, a small artisan company in the contemporary furniture accessories sector, based in Spilimbergo, a northeastern town halfway between Venice and Trieste.

Always drawn toward artistic expressions that reflect inventiveness, experimentation, Nino Basso and Cristina Colonnello share all the skills of their creations, from design to research and experimentation of materials, to the sartorial attention of handmade workmanship.

Typicalities they fuse in small collections of home and office décor objects characterized by aesthetic sobriety and timeless elegance, and creations in ceramics, a material congenial to their creative flair, which they interpret by innovating traditional working techniques with surprising creative and stylistic contributions.

Debuting in the late 1980s were the first Design Center prototypes signed by Nino Basso: home and office accessories defined by formal simplicity and elegant craftsmanship.

Already art director of an international fashion brand, Basso chose to present himself on the market with his own brand and founded Design Center. In 1991 his granddaughter, Cristina Colonnello, joined the brand, adding stimulating creative points of view to the collections that enhance the taste for impeccable craftsmanship detail and coordinates and conveys the company's identity.

So many years of working together and collections born from the recovery of Shagreen leather processing also known as Galuchat, from the use of fine woods such as heather briar, ebony, combinations reminiscent of the Art Deco style, to the modern contamination of the ancient ornamental technique of mosaic and lacquer to the enhancement of the surprising natural forms of fossil shells evidence lived millions of years ago, to the most recent ceramic works, from the elegant whiteness of paperclay porcelain, to the revisiting of the classic traditional Japanese raku process; shapes and colors in a thread of continuity that links the ancient to the present day.