[caption id="attachment_5056" align="alignnone" width="560" caption="Dror for Cappellini"][/caption]
Luxury Italian furniture retailer Cappellini presented an exhibition of limited edition designs at their showroom in Miami on December 1 entitled "Limited Forever." The designs are from Cappellini's 2005-2009 collection including works by Tom Dixon, Dror Benshetrit, Marcel Wanders, and Fabio Novembre. Present at the opening was Giulio Cappelini who Whitewall spoke with for our winter issue (to read click HERE). Later in the week, we caught up with designer Dror to discuss his unique design on view at the showroom.
WW: You have a unique piece at the Cappellini showroom in Miami that’s a sort of work in process of your Peacock chair.
DROR BENSHETRIT: At first we were supposed to do a limited edition just like everybody else but we had some issues with production and felt didn’t get there in time. The idea was to test a new print method on wool felt. The process takes a lot of time and is very expensive.
WW: Is felt a difficult material to print on?
DB: It’s almost like staining concrete. You stain one layer you get a pigment into the material and then you keep going until you get a buildup of texture. So you’re playing not just with the colors but with depth. But I’m telling you about an edition that didn’t happen [laughs].
WW: Will it be made at some point?
DB: We’re doing it for Salone next year. So for this show, Cappellin said, “We have the first pre-production piece you made, can you do something with it?” They sent it to the studio and I looked at all the imperfections, the things that needed to repaired and I said I couldn’t imagine doing anything other than highlighting the beauty of the imperfections, highlighting the process from a conceptual model, pre-production one scale model, into a production piece. What I did is I kept the blue color and covered it with gesso and took red marker and highlighted the what the imperfections are all about. It’s almost like a therapeutic way of accepting imperfections. [To view a video of the process click HERE]
WW: The production process is so important in design – these objects have to be functional and beautiful. We don’t always, though, get to see that process.
DB: Absolutely. Also I’m just sick of working behind the scenes making a confidential project for so long, and then debuting it as a finished, polished product. The process is so much more interesting. For me, I almost don’t care about the end result. I care how I got there. There is no end result cause for me every project is interconnected with the previous project. It’s my life.
