Milan 2013: industrial designer Konstantin Grcic is showing angular wooden stools and tables for Italian brand Mattiazzi at the Salone Internazionale del Mobile.

Grcic's stools and side tables are held up by an angled support that is stabilised by two more legs jutting out on either side, with all three tapering towards the ground. Two wings form the seats of the stools, while the slightly taller tables are topped with disks.

Both items have been developed to follow the design of Grcic's Medici chair, which was first released last year and has been shortlisted for the Design Museum's 2013 Design of the Year prize. The wooden pieces are painted in red or yellow, or stained dark brown to enhance the grain.

Along with the Medici collection, Mattiazzi is debuting seats inspired by camping furniture by Jasper Morrison and stools with T-shaped backs by Industrial Facility at their stand at the Salone Internazionale del Mobile - E23, Hall 20. Grcic will also be exhibiting his bench system based on Mies van der Rohe's Barcelona chair at the trade fair.

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Named Radice, the stools combine the front-half of a traditional four-legged stool with an unusual single leg in the middle of the back.

“Radice has some tension in its form and it is a slight surprise that the third leg works as well as it does to resolve the overall structure," says Industrial Facility's Sam Hecht. "It is in some ways structurally diagrammatic, yet is made comfortable visually and physically because of how this third leg supports the seat.”

A low backrest branches upwards from the back leg. Its t-bar shape provides a practical place to hang coats and handbags and is reflected in the bracing at the top and bottom of the legs.

The Radice stools have no visible fixings or screws and the seat appears to merely rest on the leg frame.

Manufactured by Mattiazzi, the stools will be available in red, yellow, black or natural wood, with additional cushion options. There is also a choice of two heights.

This is Industrial Facility's second product for Mattiazzi: in 2010 they presented a chair called Branca, inspired by the growth of tree branches. See all our stories about design by Industrial Facility.

Mattiazzi will show the project at the Salone Internazionale del Mobile from 9 to 14 April, alongside chairs based on camping equipment by Jasper Morrison. See all our stories about Mattiazzi.

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Called Fionda, which means "sling" in Italian, the chair by Jasper Morrison is composed of a folding wooden frame and a loose canvas seat that hooks over the corners and can be removed to enable the chairs to be stacked horizontally.

The chair will be available as a dining chair or a lounge chair and there will also be a matching stackable table.

It will be exhibited by Mattiazzi at the Salone Internazionale del Mobile in Milan from 9 to 14 April.

Other chairs launching at Milan next week include the Scoop chair by Danish designers KiBiSi and these armchairs with wavy backs and seats by Spanish designer Patricia Urquiola.

See all our previews of design at Milan 2013 or see all our stories about work by Jasper Morrison.

Here's some more information from Jasper Morrison:

Fionda’s mother is a folding camping chair, which itself comes from a long line of chairs known variously as BKF, Hardoy, Butterfly or Tripolina in Italy, all of which suspend a canvas sling from a frame to create a surprisingly comfortable seat. I bought one of the camping chairs in Japan and liked having it in my living room, but the aluminium X bars at the front and back were uncomfortable and prevented it being a real living room chair, so I decided to make a project out of removing the X’s.

I am attracted to the language of camping and campaign furniture. It’s something about the lightness of structure and required efficiency in achieving something comfortable which fits well in today’s mood. The frame needed a number of steps to perfect the joint but the result is light and strong, and can be stacked horizontally with the covers off.

There are two chair models, a dining chair and a lounge chair, and a table which is also stackable. It’s a chair for using inside or taking outside, for interiors which don’t need so much upholstery, and for the traveller who just got home and needs a rest!

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Milan 2011: French designers Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec will present this wooden chair for for Italian brand Mattiazzi in Milan next month.

Called Osso, the design has four sculpted wooden pads making up the seat and backrest.

The chairs are made from oak, maple or ash sourced close to Mattiazzi's factory.

Each one is manufactured with a mixture of CNC tooling and handcraft.

The collection will include a chair, armchair and child's chair plus high and low stools.

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The information below is from the designers:

Working with Mattiazzi is comparable to work with an organic farm. While being a small, family-owned company that has been manufacturing chairs for others since about forty years, Mattiazzi decided to do less yet better. By using sophisticated CNC set of tools and at the same time a greatly refined manual know-how, Mattiazzi has a hybrid way to consider furniture production.

We were particularly interested by the fact that all the equipment is powered by solar energy and that the wood is coming from the surrounding areas to be carefully selected without the use of any chemical treatments. They came back to the basics and this is precisely what piqued our interest and our fascination for the Mattiazzi family's endeavour. As designers, we feel involved in supporting such valiant microstructures that are always on the edge as they try to adjust to a constantly changing market.

That said, the Osso chair had to be the illustration of what Mattiazzi is in its roots. We designed an object in plain wood but not in regular plain wood, the quality of the wood literally makes the object, like the best piece of meat would make the refinement of a dish. Our intention was to let the sensuality of the wood material - from oak to maple to ash - express itself.

The Osso chair invites to be touched, even caressed as it is extremely sculpted and polished thanks to the use of highly sophisticated digital control equipment. The high-tech assembling system of geometrical wood panels allows a quite singular strength while preserving a design balance of the object. The Osso collection will include a chair, an armchair, a children chair as well as high and low stools.

MATTIAZZI Salone del Mobile Hall 6 Booth F32B + Fuorisalone Kaleidoscope, Gallery Corso Buenos Aires 10, entrance Via Giovanni Masera

See also:

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Industrial Facility for Mattiazzi	Flex by Georgi Manassiev	Platypus chair by Studio Juju

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Milan 2010: London designer Sam Hecht of Industrial Facility presented a wooden chair combining robotic and handcraft processes for Italian brand Mattiazzi in Milan last week.

Called Branca, the design draws on the growth of tree branches.

The back legs are each CNC-moulded from one piece of wood.

See all our stories about Milan 2010 in our special category.

The information below is from Industrial Facility:

In 1978 the Italian brothers nevi and Fabbiano Mattiazzi started an obsession with wood production. For the past thirty years, this obsession has led them to produce furniture for some of the great Italian furniture brands.

After several trips to Mattiazzi's factory, along with close discussions with their craftsmen, Industrial Facility wished to push Mattiazzi further into the position of the robotic craftsman. What is a chari whose ingredients are a combination of highly complex parts (made possible with CNC machinery, most notably their eight Axis Robot which they had become expert at), alongside simple traditional shaping and finishing by hand?

"I observed that the power of the robot, the repetition of the machine and the skills of the craftsman already have synchronised relationships at Mattiazzi - where each process is as carefully selected as much as the wood blocks that were to be shaped,' says Hecht.

It was in conversations with his partner Kim Colin that the focus was turned to nature, where complexity thrives with reason. Beauty is simply a result of constant growth. In particular, the branches of a tree were to provide the critical analogy for the project. Like wooden branches on a tree, Branca is a chair that is familiar to the eye. We accept that branches support the joints of twigs and leaves at different points that may seem random but are al intentional.

With Branca, its back leg supports the critical joints of the armrest, the seat and the back, and is made from a single piece of wood produced robotically.

The joints are seen as but a part of the seamless nature of the chair and its simple outline belies the complexity of production. With no question, Branca had to hold all of the functional attributes we expect a chair to have in a modern condition - to be comfortable; to have armrests; to fit under a table; to be light enough to carry; and to stack for easy shipping.

Branca is inspired by wooden branches that turn, twist, meet and branch off.

See also:

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