BOTTEGA GHIANDA: LUIGI (O MI AMATE VOI), GAETANO PESCE’S BOOKCASE

Images and Text Courtesy of Bottega Ghianda

Milan Design Week 2023

During Milan Design Week 2023, Bottega Ghianda revealed Luigi (o mi amate voi), a bookcase by Gaetano Pesce. Luigi is the re-interpretation of the bookcase prototype by Gaetano Pesce in the early 1980s.

Objects change. Furniture evolves. Designs transform and dialogue with the changing times. Gaetano Pesce’s Luigi (o mi amate voi) bookcase is an emblematic example. It was originally prototyped in 1982, with the help of an Italian company that no longer exists it has been reissued by Bottega Ghianda with some significant innovations. In the 1980s prototypes, Pesce used wood. Whilst now it is a hybrid object in which the black-stained beech wood structure contains and borders shelves in resin. Being cast in a mould using unique and unrepeatable combinations of colours, melted materials, mixes and interpenetration.

For a company like Bottega Ghianda, this is a daring and surprising turn: in the temple of cabinet-making and wooden traditions, Romeo Sozzi puts an unexpected material, such as resin, which is treated with the care, rigour and value, traditionally reserved for the most precious wood types.

Presented by Som Santoso

Faithful to his philosophy of manufactured product customisation, Gaetano Pesce, created a charming multi-purpose object. The pivoting shelves can be folded, whilst a LED light is housed within the structure to create a luminous wall, or theatrical backdrop. The light emphasises the resin’s translucence making the shelves emerge like floating galaxies, or a mysterious atlas of coloured Rorschach blots. The irregular resin mixtures combine with the rigour of the wooden structure that frames them through a network of squares and rectangles that recall the works of Mondrian.

The cabinet is fixed to the wall at the top with red lacquered wooden ball stitching – almost a punctuation that dictates the wooden squares’ rhythm and modularity. Luigi (o mi amate voi) is placed in the domestic space as a unique polysemic object – a bookcase and scenographic backdrop and a luministic and chromatic device, resulting in a design dialogue with contemporary art.

The name Luigi (o mi amate voi) refers and pays tribute to a master carpenter named Luigi who worked with Pesce at Cassina’s Research and Development Centre. A simple man with a fervent intelligence.