"Arts & Crafts & Design: Time According to ECAL and Swiss Craftsmen"

Ecal and Vacheron-Constantin presented an exquisite suite of objects under the tutelage of Studio Formafantasma in Milan's Museo Bagatti Valsecchi. Twelve students were asked to pair up with a Swiss craftsman of particular expertise and collaborate on a project where each party contributes in equal measure. My particular favorite was Explosion Printanière by designer Jean Baptiste Colleuille with Craftsman François Junod. The dynamic, mechanized sculptural piece uses fine watchmaking precision to a blooming, explosive effect.

Kartell Goes Sottsass

Designed in 2004, Sottsass' suite of eight vases, stools, and a lamp somehow never made it to production—until now. The POMO forms reference Roman column capitols and suggest the basic building block of post-modernism with the unique exactness that only Sottsass could execute. It is unfortunate, however, that the pieces are framed within an untimely Memphis comeback that in turn defies their perennial relevance.

Max Lamb, Exercise in Sitting

Max Lamb's installation Exercise in Sitting was one of the most inspiring parts of Milan Design Week. Composed of a large circle of 40-plus chairs produced in the last decade, the display shows Lamb's ability to defy particularity in style and materiality. The configuration of pieces invokes a group therapy setting that is as evocative as it is indicative of a process; Lamb seems to pre-determine form and removes material until the chair is revealed.

PIN-UP x Luca Cipelletti

PIN-UP magazine's collaboration with Luca Cipelletti is literally a shit show. The walls of Milan's POMO gallery are troweled in demethanized cow dung to a startlingly elegant effect. The small, but quite beautiful, jewel-box of a room contained two blocks of cow dung bricks created especially for the show by the Museo della Merda just outside of Milan. Visitors are allowed to takeaway the bricks—which were fittingly branded on each side by PIN-UP, Pomo Gallery, and Museo della Merda—to use as paperweights.

Nendo One-Year Retrospective

Nendo's exhibition in Milan is a taxonomy of the studio's designs for more than 15 different brands over the course of one year. Comprised of excitingly elegant objects, the show is perhaps a bit too solemn in its presentation and missing some of the levity of these pieces. The vast, yet minimal installation of objects and furniture included a suite of new glass tables designed for manufacturer GlasItalia. The extremely simple table designs are configured to privilege the play of light and its unique effect on particular properties of the design.