And the Salone del Mobile becomes its (real) bookshop

The Salone del Mobile has its own bookshop. Not a bookshop, a bookshop. Yes there are some objects, but more things that have to do with art printing such as numbered serigraphs by Enzo Mari and Bruno Munari. But the focus is on the books. It is one of the strongest innovations of this Salone that after the pandemic, like everyone, has understood that something needs to change. Thus the Euroluce biennial has become the City of Lights, the terrain for experimenting with what a fair of the future might look like. And the most famous business fair in Italy (and there is business, with +12.7% and 56.6 billion in turnover in 2022) has an important cultural schedule, with over five exhibitions (within the Salone, not in the city) and a large space dedicated to talks (or rather dialogues, chats, conversations?) with intellectual and professional artists. All curated by Beppe Finessi and designed by the studios most attentive to social design such as Lombardini22 and Formafantasma.

In all of this, the bookshop has a central space, not only symbolically, with its two hundred square meters curated by Corraini, a refined publishing house and bookshop born out of an art gallery and then becoming a reference for graphics, art and design texts. But what’s inside? «The theme of the selection was light – says Pietro Corraini -, we started from there and then, as often happens in design, we went very far, from art to science, from literature to physics, from poetry to artificial intelligence».

Large international publishers and niche publishers, rare or out-of-print books, art objects, curiosities and rarities, all chosen by a team in constant brainstorming. «A lively discussion group was immediately created with blows of “This must be there!” and “No, this has nothing to do with it” or “We took this one last year to this other bookstore and so that’s enough now”, without thinking that those who come here may not have been there”. The team is made up of Corraini booksellers (who have their mother bookshop in Mantua, then in Milan and Turin in the Pinacoteca Agnelli, plus bookshops curated for Arte Fiera and Artissima) and by the curators of the fair’s exhibitions, as well as other publishers who – says Pietro Corraini – call me and say “Look, this book is beautiful and it must be there, I only have three copies but I’ll send you one anyway”».

In short, there is a community that has set in motion to give life and pages to the new bookshop of the Salone del Mobile. «The selection of the magazines was made by the Reading Room of Milan and a small publisher of great quality like Henry Beyle collaborated with us».

From the research on light in the literature came “The chandelier” by Clarice Lispector (Adelphi) and then “Superba è la notte” by Alda Merini (Einaudi) and “Summer light and it is immediately night” by Jón Kalman Stefánsson (Hyperborea ). Among the hundreds of design titles, the best of seven volumes that cannot be found in a single book: “Examples, Reprint. Lighting 1934-1964″ (Edizioni Compasso), the magazine “Inventario” edited by Beppe Finessi which won the Compasso d’oro; and then “Good Design” (by Bruno Munari) which turns 60 and “Good by Design: Ideas For A Better World” (ed. Victionary), awareness campaigns and impactful posters (for good).

Among the objects, three amusing things: the little monkey Zizì, winner of the first Compasso d’oro in 1954 and the series of vases and jewels by Gaetano Pesce (guest of the Salone) for Fish Design. Plus an unpublished, Bruno Munari’s Gilet with book holder pockets. «He designed it in the 90s but it had never been put into production – says Corraini -. In September, however, it will be produced and we begin to tell about it in the Bookshop of the Salone, we asked Munari for a book exhibitor and he had designed a waistcoat with pockets of different sizes for different books».

So far the contents, and the container? The 200 square meter bookcase was designed by Formafantasma, one of the coolest (coolest?) and most committed designer duo of these years, Italians with studios in Amsterdam and Milan. Who knows how to design a bookshop for the Salone del Mobile, thinking of a home bookshop, a bookshop or a library? «We thought of a library – replies Simone Ferrasin, one of the two Formafantasma (the other is Andrea Trimarchi) – because we were interested in the space being not only dedicated to the sale, but to the consultation of books, a more intimate and less exhibition hall, therefore with a setting in the name of simplicity, a modular structure in wood painted in golden tones, many tables and chairs to stop and leaf through the books, display cases for the rarest pieces, and very classic suspension lamps, neutral globes for intimate lighting.

Both graduates in Design from Eindhoven, they have not recommended titles for the Salone bookshop but would like there to be those that were important to them. Guy? «For me, “Design for the real world” by Viktor Papanek and “Hello World: Where design meets life” by Alice Rawsthorn are fundamental; but anthropology texts should never be lacking in a design library – I am thinking of Tim Ingold who has written very well on the interaction between architecture and design – because anthropologists are among the thinkers who have recently written the most interesting texts on the problems to the ecosystem and ecology; I feel like saying, for example, “How forests think” by Eduardo Kohn».

In their home, he tells us, they have decided to have a very small bookcase because they keep the bulk of it in the office: «At home we only bring the books we read at the time, which we keep in small containers and change regularly». As for those things that “make design” in the bookcases that you see in houses and house magazines, such as the huge Coffee table books and vases and objects interspersed with the books, they have clear ideas: «Some coffee table books are interesting but mostly the more I see them useful for smoothing out a dip in the floor, under the leg of a table or chair; as for the rest, as in people’s lives it happens that things mix and therefore I think it is natural that they mix with other things, and then books also have their own physical and material nature as well as intellectual, therefore it is not a habit or it is frivolous to treat them as beautiful objects, on the other hand there are very well designed ones and I don’t find this demeaning for the authors. Then of course, personally we prefer things to have less styling possible. As far as the Salone Bookshop is concerned, luckily we work with Corraini who is a very refined publisher ».

All that remains is to ask him if it is nice to design bookcases. «Yes, it’s a beautiful object to deal with, much more than a chair, because they live together with whoever commissions them or whoever buys them, that is, the project doesn’t end there; a chair will always remain more or less the same, a bookcase you know will never remain as you designed it, and this thing is beautiful».