Serralunga is a family-run company founded in 1925. Ahead of the Salone del Mobile 2012, Marco Serralunga gives a short interview. Serralunga introduces himself in this way:
“I call myself an entrepreneur who is passionate about design, I’m not a salesman or a businessman, I am a true entrepreneur who produces everything locally in Biella and is passionate about design.” Before you became a focal point in the market for furniture items such as vases, chairs and lamps, what did Serralunga do? I tanned leather
The first day I entered the factory we still had the tannery. Eh, because the company started out as a tannery, there was the plastics department, the rubber department, and the tannery. I was struck by the tanning process, the incredible, very strong smell, the people pulling hides out of the barrels; on the other hand, plastics seduced me immediately, with the machinery, the moulding, the smell of plastic that I like so much, freshly melted plastic looks like freshly baked bread.
The first successful project with plastics?
In the seventies I was in my twenties. The idea came about when my brother and I learned the rotational moulding technology in America, near New York, and we had the idea of remaking a traditional Italian product, a terracotta vase, in plastic. It was an amazing success that wiped out the terracotta market. A lot of people copied us afterwards, but back then it was incredible stuff.
Serralunga has seen quite a few years of design history from a privileged position: what do you remember from the 1970s to the present day? What are your milestones?
When I think of the 1970s, I am reminded of Eero Arnio’s ball chair; it was everywhere, on all the covers of fashion magazines, enveloping, transgressive. In the 1980s I was impressed by Zanuso’s first upholstered sofas, which were wonderfully innovative, and then Zanotta’s inflatable products. In the nineties Cappellini arrived; it was the era of incredibly talented young people who then became archistars. In the 00s I loved Ron Arad’s Victoria Albert, and a chair by Moroso.
What will Serralunga bring to the Fuori Salone del Mobile 2012?
Three vases, to underscore that Serralunga is the founder and leader, in a market sense but also in a mental sense: one by Fukasawa and one by Arnio, plus a vase by Katja Pettersson. Then we will bring two chairs, one transversal, serious, elegant and in line with these times where the useless has been discarded but elegance remains, an elegant luxury but at an affordable price, and a product that I find exceptional: a Rizzato indoor-outdoor chair, a very nice, unique chair. After receiving several Compassi d’Oro awards, Paolo Rizzato has made an innovative but classy product, traditional but highly innovative, and I love it! Then there will be a very simple bedside table, but which has special functions: a practical and functional design is needed, and then a Mangiarotti bar table, for outdoor use, with the possibility, for example, of having a plug to charge your mobile phone, iPad…
What do the designers who choose Serralunga have in common?
I usually choose them based on the spirit of the project: this year – apart from Katja Pettersson – they are all experienced people. Fabio Bortolami has made beautiful objects exhibited in museums all over the world, Paolo Rizzato needs no introduction, and then Eero Arnio, a historical designer… they all know how to propose a line in which they combine creativity and functionality, and have a pragmatic sense of the lines. There is much less irony than in the past, and much more elegance, I hope.
And there is also room for reflection on design democracy, prices, and the components of a project
From the start we avoided luxury for its own sake. Ours is a design that is based on an efficient production process that aims to improve price and functionality, it is democratic, because design where form accounts for 70 per cent of the product is no longer sustainable. Today it is 30% form, 30% price, 30% functionality, and the remaining 10% other values. Absolutely! Once upon a time, perhaps in the early 2000s and late 1990s, the form prevailed. Today it is 30 30 30.
And tomorrow?
I have so many projects, some of them are secret, going in directions that I find amusing that I have had in my head for ten years: and then I would like to make a beautiful armchair, a product that is absolutely inside outside, 100% in and out, an armchair that becomes an icon. We entrusted the project to Rizzato, to Fukasawa: it is a dream that other designers are already pursuing.