“At the base of each project there must be amazement. I always design things trying to surprise; firstly myself, because boredom is what I hate most” – Giovanni Tommaso Garattoni
Architect, glass furniture wizard, graphic artist, rock club owner… Giovanni Tommaso Garattoni is a designer with a number of wild and creative hats.
His eclectic influences embrace a childhood in the old Italian seaside town of Rimini, exploring the rationalist architecture of the abandoned 1930s Colonie hostels (holiday camps for children), through to 60s rock band The Velvet Underground, for whom Giovanni’s award-winning mirror VU pays tribute.
Giovanni’s collaboration with glass furniture specialists Tonelli Design began at a party in the mid-nineties. A chance meeting with Tonelli’s original art director/co-founder, Marco Gaudenzi, kick-started their successful collaboration which continues to this day.
“It’s a matter of transparencies and reflections. With glass you need imagination; one has to go further than the material”
GM: Giovanni your first piece of glass furniture for Tonelli Design was back in 1996. What was the product?
GTG: Marco Gaudenzi asked me to make some designs for Tonelli. Until that time I’d devoted myself only to unique pieces completely handmade for my own collection The Decline of Western Civilization. Therefore designing for industry seemed like a great challenge.
I took a few months to think it over and then I submitted a concept that later became the collection Space Invaders.
At that time glass was still considered a ‘cold and dangerous’ material, so my first goal was to render it ‘comfortable’. A collection of tables was produced, but unfortunately only for a few years because back then it wasn’t easy finding suppliers that could satisfy the high quality needed for glass furniture. There were big processing issues with the machine tool, which was still at an experimental level in those days.
I still use a Space Invader table as a desk in my office.
GM: What were your thoughts about working with glass as the primary material?
GTG: I consider glass the most difficult material. Difficult to make, for intrinsic reasons, such as weight and fragility, but especially difficult to design. Glass furniture has to be imagined. The drawing alone is not sufficient; in fact, what is often beautiful ‘on paper’ is disappointing once produced. It’s a matter of transparencies and reflections. With glass you need imagination; one has to go further than the material.
GM: Italian design is celebrated the world over. Do you feel your nationality, and in particular the area of Italy you grew up in, has had a big influence on your style?
GTG: Rimini is a seaside town and I think having a border open to ‘infinity’ affects the residents’ character deeply. A tourist city inspires life rhythms that are deeply different from those of a big city. There is time to stop and think, and thinking is vital for a designer.
It is also a city of bathing tourism – one of the first worldwide in the first half of the 19th century. Consequently, it’s a city extremely sensitive to trends and changes.
“As a boy I loved to venture through these buildings; I believe that my going there enormously influenced my formation”
In Rimini there is an evident modernistic tendency; the rationalist architecture of the thirties is a unique example that profoundly marks our territory. Some of the seaside hostels, such as the Colonia are real landmarks. ‘The Ships’ of Cattolica (Colonia XXVIII Ottobre) built in 1934 is a rare example of futuristic architecture.
‘Colonia Novarese’ (1933) and the ‘Colonia Agip of Cesenatico’ (1940) to name only the most important buildings, are real future flashes. As a boy I loved to venture through these buildings; I believe that my going there enormously influenced my formation.
We must also not forget the motorcar that marked the 20th century. In Emilia-Romagna there is a real cult for speed. Enzo Ferrari, the Maserati brothers, Ferruccio Lamborghini or Massimo Tamburini were born here. Ducati, Bimota and many other links to motors.
And then there is the dancing. An indispensable component to define this area’s character. It’s no coincidence that in Romagna there is the biggest concentration of discos in all Europe. When I was twenty, I myself opened a club, called Slego, which afterwards became one of the most important rock clubs in Europe.
Also Benito Mussolini and Federico Fellini were born in Romagna; but here the tale would become too long and complicated…
“I was particularly fascinated by the idea of artist-artisan and the concept of ‘total art’ that involved all aspects of everyday life”
GM: In the 1980s you were one of the founders of a movement called Bolidisimo which has been described as a ‘turning point’ in Italian taste at that time. What was this movement and the ‘turning point’? How did it inform your design process at the time?
GTG: At the beginning of the eighties, in the wake of punk and ‘do it yourself’ philosophy, a great number of creative groups were born. Instead of musical instruments they had paper, pens or brushes. They were groups made up of very young people wanting to experiment in the world of graphic arts, cartoons or art. Bologna, Florence and Rimini were the cities mostly involved. It’s interesting to see how these areas, all peripheral, became centres of cultural production.
Bolidismo, ‘20th century’s last avant-garde’ was born in a café, like those historical ones of a century earlier.
The common elements were the cult of dynamism, love for the American streamline design, creative derision, and a craving to be alternative to the, at the time, dominant postmodern taste. Particularly fascinating to me was the idea of artist-artisan. The concept of ‘total art’ that involved all aspects of everyday life. I think that our forerunner vision is there for all to see. The ‘Bolidistic’ concepts are almost more present now than when they were first formed.
GM: As well as glass furniture for Tonelli, you have also designed six mirrors, including the VU mirror which was honoured by the ADI’s Compasso d’Oro Awards, a tremendous accolade. Can you tell us a little about this mirror? What were the thought process that went into the design and the look?
GTC: I like visiting the factories and breathing the air. Looking at the machinery, the labourers at work, the stacks of pieces, the discarded prototypes, the packing crates. Inspiration can be born in any moment.
Each time I visit Tonelli I like going through the factory and looking at the piles of glass slabs. I am mesmerized by the reflections they create. The VU (Vision Underground) mirror probably was born unconsciously from this fascination.
VU is like being in a dream. A mirror where its function needs to be sought in the emotion it inspires. Everyone sees what he wishes. From this point of view, it is an actual tribute to Narcissus. The very essence of a mirror.
But the name is a tribute to The Velvet Underground.
“Ours is the era of simultaneous images. I try to design objects expressing our time’s meaning”
GM: Many of your glass furniture designs appear to play with perspective. Mirrors are overly large, there are concave/convex elements, alternating levels, mirror effects – the look is very dynamic. Can you tell us a little about this style?
GTG: Movement is the key.
Glass furniture needs light to exist and movement to create effects. It is like a magic trick; if you move the surface you amplify the charm. That is the reason I always try to ‘shape’ my items.
I also like disintegrating images. Fragmentation is the stylistic figure of our age. It’s like watching simultaneously a dozen TV screens; the image loses significance to become a decorative pattern. Like a carpet. Or Instagram.
GM: If you had to choose just three of the many pieces you have designed for Tonelli which would they be and why?
GTC: Stati d’animo is the design for Tonelli I am especially linked to. It was the beginning of everything. I had already designed Bungalow, inventing the modular mirror, but with Stati d’animo I understood that it could be much fun to play with surfaces, breaking them, reversing and flipping them over.
Stati d’animo
The Stati d’animo mirror changes mood when looked at from different angles. Just as its name. As with the paintings by Umberto Boccioni to whom it is dedicated. I love this product because the great scenic impact is achieved in a very simple manner. Two glass parts on a piece of wood. This is the best for a designer and also for the company producing it. At the base of each project there must be amazement. I always designed things trying to surprise; firstly myself, because boredom is what I hate most.
Among the projects that marked my professional relationship with Tonelli Design I would put first of all Naked.
Naked
The armchair Naked proposes to expose the bourgeois house symbol (as in Grande Vetro by Duchamp). It’s structural use of glass, together with the leather, luxury material for excellence, creates a ‘short circuit’ that makes it still current.
When I designed it, I had in mind the works by Eileen Gray. I wanted to achieve the same elegance and sobriety.
Luz de Luna
Then the table Luz de Luna. I always liked experimenting, working techniques that evidence the material’s force. Glass sculpture has existed for hundreds of years. But handmade. Carving glass mechanically, instead I think, is something belonging to our time, where technology is getting the upper hand on mankind. Here, I consider Luz de Luna a kind of a payback of mankind to machinery.
Gerundio
Finally, Gerundio. Gerundio is a mirror where the frame is both decorative and functional. I particularly love the round version as it has a great scenographic impact. It’s a mirror that seems to roll away.
And then obviously the VU mirror we have already talked about. A great intuitive project but also a big technological effort for Tonelli Design.
GM: What have been the biggest advances/changes in the design world since you initially started out?
GTG: Obviously digital technology. Technology linked to computers revolutionized this world. When I started designing it was completely by hand. Personally, I even used a technique that was already anachronistic in the eighties.
With a pencil I made plates at 1:1 scale on tissue paper. My grandmother in her youth was a famous seamstress, and I would see her use tissue paper for clothes sewing patterns.
All my drawings were very carefully made, also from a graphic point of view. Then I made heliographic copies. The artisans in charge of manufacturing the products, sometimes quite complex ones, all remained speechless.
Today, the possibility of transferring the modelling file to the tool machine makes the path much simpler, but not always more stimulating. The difference is always given by the designer’s creativity.
Lately I have gone back to handmade designs. The idea must be captured when it arrives; that is the reason I always carry a notebook in my bag. Handmade sketches reproduce the project’s intuition much better than any rendering.
GM: What can we next look forward to from you?
GTG: Wonder is creativity’s motor. Over the years I have touched themes that for several reasons I have not had the chance to go further into; and I’m not talking only about design. I would like to focus on things important to me.
Music I think will be the first of these.