Milan 2016: Italian furniture brand Magis has launched furniture and accessories by designers Konstantin Grcic, the Bouroullec brothers and Jerszy Seymour in Milan to mark the company's 40th anniversary (+ slideshow).
Magis' exhibition at last week's Salone del Mobile furniture fair was dedicated to the brand's history, and featured new designs along with its iconic products.
The company described it as "an exhibition that sums up the collaboration between Magis and some of the biggest names on the international design scene in the past decades".
For 2016, German designer Grcic has created a series of tables and benches called Brut. The eclectic collection ranges from small circular side tables to long, rectangular glass-topped designs – but all are made using cast iron in some way.
"The project makes reference to cast iron's typical industrial uses and applies its material grammar to the realm of contemporary furniture," said Grcic, who is currently exhibiting a set of abstract seats in Paris.
The designer has also produced a small mule-shaped doorstop named Ettore using the material, created for Magis' anniversary.
French brothers Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec have extended their Officina collection of tables and chairs into a range of home accessories.
Taking similar forms to the furniture's iron bases, the new designs include candlesticks, candelabras, a coat stand and wall hangers, a valet, and a freestanding mirror.
"All these pieces feature a forged iron structure, with the allure of a raw material handed down through the centuries, alive, with those slight imperfections that once again make each item in this collection unique, with a profoundly refined and elegant spirit," said the duo.
Also new this year is a set of lightweight high stools and tables by German designer Jerszy Seymour.
Each piece is made from recyclable welded aluminium sections with surfaces splattered with paint.
Seymour titled the range: Bureau for the Study of Vivid Blue Every-Colour Inhabitations of the Planet, the Transformation of Reality, and a Multitude of Happy Endings. Magis has shortened this to Happy Endings.
Dutch designer Marcel Wanders has contributed a new edition to his Cyborg range of chairs, named Daisy, which pairs a perforated aluminium back with a polycarbonate base.
As part of a trend for children's furniture in Milan this year, Swiss studio Big-Game has added a miniature height-adjustable chair to Magis' Me Too range, while artist Benedetta Mori Ubaldini has created a latticed floating fish.
Older pieces on show at the fair included designs by Philippe Starck, Naoto Fukasawa and Eero Aarnio – who is the subject of a current exhibition at Helsinki Design Museum.
Also during Milan design week, which took place from 12 to 17 April 2016, Magis organised an exhibition at its showroom on Corso Garibaldi.
The showcase was dedicated to Jaime Hayón's Mila chair, which debuted last year and is now available for market in two new variations.