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Manoteca
Manoteca
Manoteca
Manoteca
Manoteca
Manoteca

Manoteca

Designer - Emilia-Romagna, Italy

Designer Elisa Cavani founded Manoteca in 2011. Based in the center of Bologna, Manoteca is a workshop and atelier where Elisa explores the feelings that objects elicit in a viewer. She selects handcrafted, traditional pieces and subsequently restores and reassembles them with the intent of creating functional sculptures which become singular works of art that communicate the beauty of time and the symbolism of form.

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We want to give new meanings to pieces of history, giving value to human relationships, ideas, and possibilities, filling them with life, meaning and depth

Manoteca, a craft workshop and experimental space for transversal languages and design creations with a strong personality, was founded by designer Elisa Cavani in 2011, in a space surrounded by nature inside a historical building in the center of Bologna.

At the heart of each of its projects, there is a piece of history that takes new life again: it may be a reinterpreted vintage object, a block of marble that bears traces of centuries-old stratifications, a fragment of metal or a material in which the designer's creativity sees infinite, precious possibilities.

The result of this creative process is a collection of emotional objects, high-value unique pieces that combine art, craftsmanship, vision, and soul.

At the same time, they are new ways of communicating and new stories to be told, through the meanings that each piece, always strongly linked to the territory from which it originates, brings with it.

They are functional sculptures with a strong aesthetic and narrative impact, they are mirrors that explore the boundary between being and appearing, transforming tables, furnishing components, true works of art: each piece is entirely handmade in Bologna with the collaboration of ten skilled artisans (blacksmiths, restorative carpenters, upholsterers, glassmakers) who, with generous attention and sincere care, bring the expertise, history and value of high Italian craftsmanship to each object.

Their desire is to create objects with a strong aesthetic and artistic value, with a distinct personality. They want to give new meanings to pieces of history, their own and that of each person, giving value to human relationships, ideas, and possibilities, filling them with life, meaning and depth.


The Collection

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Manoteca's STONE MIRROR collection is the result of artistic research that designer Elisa Cavani has been conducting for some time on the creative and design possibilities offered by pieces of marble that are unique in shape, color, and veining: a material whose beauty and history spanning millions of years she has been able to capture, which fascinates with its imperfect and precious nature.
It all began with her encounter with a fragment of rough marble in the yard of a quarry, a block weighing about 50 kg that she took with her to Manoteca's Bologna atelier. Here he studied and observed it at length, reflecting on the connection between natural and human elements, placed in relation to each other in a complex and nuanced dialogue. The intuition to combine a mirror with the marble block was born from the reflection he developed on the perception of beauty, on being and appearing, on seeing oneself and being seen, and on the fundamental acceptance of observing oneself for what one is and above all of recognizing oneself as unique and precious, able to feel part of the whole universe.

The exploration of this concept, combined with artistic vision and craftsmanship, has given rise to a collection of mirrors, singular works of art, each one different from the next, unique pieces made from rough stones with fascinating natural finishes, combined with elements in oxidized iron, brass and oak wood.