Alessandro La Spada is one of the most eclectic and daring names in Italian interior design, with frequent forays into highly creative fields: from luxury to lighting, from leather goods to custom motorcycles, from objects to visual design.
\nCurious and experimental, drawn to the cross-pollination of art, design and age-old crafts, he has extensive experience alongside historic furniture brands such as Visionnaire, Smania, La Murrina, Illulian rugs, Besana, Longhi and Milldue, surface-cladding giants such as Antolini, and young brands such as Clan Milano, where he is Art Director.<\/p>\n
Distinctive traits<\/em><\/strong> Portfolio<\/em><\/strong> PROFESSOR MALERBA <\/em><\/strong> SANDRINO <\/strong><\/em>
\nAlessandro has always been fascinated by the emotional side of objects and by a lively exploration of materials, understood as an introspective inquiry.
\nHis projects share the same common thread, in which he condenses dreamlike suggestions, attention to detail, luxury and experimental functionality.
\nHe likes to call himself a self-taught artist with the spirit of a craftsman rather than a designer, even though he taught furniture design at the Interior Design Institute IDI\u2019Ac for many years and has held workshops at Domus Academy.<\/p>\n
\nLa Spada has dozens of collaborations with prestigious furniture brands to his name, designing intense, passionate collections that interpret the client\u2019s taste without giving up his creative personality or his proud Southern roots.
\nHe has conceived numerous exhibition design projects, including FIAT\u2019s London showroom in 2007, the Visionnaire, Antolini, Smania, Longhi, Milldue and Clan Milano stands at several editions of the Salone del Mobile, and the Milan windows of the Boscolo Hotel for La Murrina in 2015 and IFDM in 2016.
\nAlessandro knows how to seduce and astonish with refined, expressive installations in which container and content engage in a synergistic dialogue, in a crescendo of irreverent, alternative stylistic contaminations.
\n\u201cSpace is not a constraint but a challenge\u201d: this is how his constant design drive and his choice of organic and industrial materials take shape, creating exclusive, refined living spaces \u2013 from the placid shores of Lake Garda to the convivial spaces of a luxury Milan hotel and the cold latitudes of Saint Petersburg.<\/p>\n
\nand the Venetian Glass Crocodile
\n<\/em><\/strong>It was a clear winter\u2019s day in the early eighteenth century. Professor Malerba \u2013 an incorrigible researcher, an extraordinary man curious about everything and about \u2018nothing\u2019 \u2013 stood at the window of his home in his native Sicily, overlooking a remarkably green and lush garden. He was pondering the long journey that would take him to the island of Murano, near Venice, where rumour had it a \u2018Jardin de Verre\u2019 was growing.
\nA little scatterbrained but at least as curious as he was, his assistant Bluma was hurriedly packing the bags, as if the final decision had already been made.
\nNeedless to say, in the blink of an eye they reached their destination. There they discovered that the flowers and plants of the famous garden took shape thanks to the skill of local artisans, who could draw from the shapeless matter of fused sand and soda a small glowing gather, which they then blew, shaped, joined, drew into the finest threads, cut and modelled into a thousand different forms. Faced with such magic, Bluma squealed with delight and dashed tirelessly around the furnace.
\nThrough a small opening, she glimpsed a strange creature half-hidden in the lagoon and, with an expression somewhere between disbelief and wonder, began pointing frantically at the beast. \u201cIt\u2019s a crocodile!\u201d exclaimed the Professor, overjoyed. Bluma begged the Professor to take the animal home with them, swearing, stamping her feet, that she would care for it as devotedly as she cared for him.
\nBut the Professor had another idea in mind: to share such beauty by bringing the crocodile \u2013 which turned out to have been shaped over the years by the lagoon waters from the offcuts of the glass garden\u2019s flowers \u2013 to Milan for the April Salone del Mobile, even then considered the apotheosis of international creativity.
\nHe therefore called on Margel, a lady of the Venetian upper class and a part-time journalist, who, having confirmed the specimen\u2019s absolute splendour through her ever-present binoculars, accepted without hesitation the invitation to join them on this fantastic adventure.
\nAnd so, all together \u2013 Professor Malerba, the faithful Bluma and the very snobbish Margel, chin held high and crocodile in tow \u2013 they set off for the Lombard city, where they proudly showed half the world \u2018Le Crocodile en Verre de Venise\u2019 inside the Murano artisans\u2019 workshop on the city\u2019s most prestigious street.<\/p>\n
\nThe Butcher
\n<\/strong><\/em>\u201cSandrino! Where have you hidden Grandpa\u2019s knives?\u201d
\nIt was one of the phrases that echoed most often through the alleys near home and the back of the shop.
\nAnother Thursday, with Alessandro secretly tinkering with his grandfather\u2019s tools, taken from the butcher\u2019s shop. In his secret hideaway every relic he collected changed shape, taking on characters different from those intended for its original use. Blades, hooks, meat tenderisers \u2013 anything that could spark interest and curiosity was promptly snatched from its everyday use and elevated to a form of artistic experimentation.
\nAlessandro \u2013 always called \u201cSANDRINO\u201d in the South \u2013 was born on the outskirts of Reggio Calabria to Sicilian parents. He is an artist with the spirit of a craftsman, and by nature he sees things from every angle. He is driven by an irrepressible urge to customise anything that comes into his hands!
\nHe was often seen darting from one door to the next, or riding his home-built bicycle, on those days when the heat seems strong enough to bend the shapes of distant things.
\nBut perhaps things really did change; perhaps, under the scorching southern Italian sun, they could reveal their true nature, altering their form and taking on new functions. Sandrino moved through the world with the eyes of someone who can see another side to everything.
\nAnd so, helping his grandfather day after day in the shop and the butcher\u2019s, he discovered that the tools around him \u2013 which he came to know so well \u2013 were ready for a transformation, becoming mirrors, side tables and sculptural pieces with the character of works of art.
\nIn the hours after helping in the shop, Sandrino would retreat to tinker, with skill and a hunger to experiment, filing, welding and cutting, just as in a real atelier.
\nThis is how \u201cSandrino the Butcher\u201d was born.
\n\u201cSandrino the Butcher\u201d is a reflection on the human condition through the Doppelg\u00e4nger, the sometimes dark twin that belongs to every human being and with whom we often alternate unconsciously. Born from Alessandro La Spada\u2019s vivid imagination, it is inspired by the work of his maternal grandfather, a Sicilian restaurateur whose theatrical gestures have been translated into the Art-Design pieces presented in London. Kitchen tools such as cleavers, hooks and knives are freed from their original function to become eclectic creations dominated by pure aesthetic beauty \u2013 a tribute to manual work that becomes art in its daily ritual, expressed in the Never on Sunday console, the Cleaver mirror with wall lamp and the Steak stool.
\nThe series was produced in a numbered edition and includes fifty stools, eight consoles and as many mirrors with wall lamps.
\nExhibited exclusively from 12 April to 10 May 2017 in the windows of Harrods on Brompton Road, London, \u201cSandrino the Butcher\u201d is Visionnaire\u2019s first limited-edition Art-Design project, conceived by designer Alessandro La Spada.
\nThe installation, previewed on 30 March at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), is part of Harrods\u2019 Art Partners programme, the initiative celebrating excellence in contemporary design through collaborations between luxury brands and internationally renowned creatives.<\/p>\n