Total Trattoria by Martino Gamper

Designer Martino Gamper has designed every aspect of the Total Trattoria installation at the Aram Gallery in London, including the furniture, tableware, cutlery and food.

Gamper has been collaborating on Trattoria events for 8 years, cooking the meals himself.

For this latest event, Gamper installed a dining area for 25 guests surrounding a working kitchen at the gallery, and opened the installation by cooking for invited guests.

The Off-Cut table is made of thirteen individual units butted up against each other in a horse-shoe configuration.

The leg system for each is the same but the table tops are made from a mixture of teak reclaimed from English school laboratory desks, oak from Scottish church benches and poplar from the London Patent Office.

The 25 Combo chairs are made from twelve different components in three different timbers and combined in various ways, like combining a selection of ingredients to make different recipes.

The Total Trattoria exhibition will be open until 26 April 2008.

The following information is from the Aram gallery:

The Aram Gallery has commissioned London-based designer Martino Gamper to create Total Trattoria - the ultimate expression of his Trattoria al Cappello concept.

Developing further his idea, Total Trattoria, which opened on 7 March, completes the concept and puts it on show to the public for the first time.

Gamper has designed every single element of the dining event ranging from the kitchen and its storage areas to the cutlery and the tables and chairs to the glassware. A series of thirteen individual tables that connect to form one large dining table snakes around the gallery to seat 25 guests. The 25 chairs around the table are all different but are constructed from the same set of component parts, designed by Gamper.

The pieces include the results of many collaborations between Gamper and a wide variety of makers including engraved glasses placed on clusters of leather coasters, blown-glass water jugs and limited edition placemats designed by Gamper’s collaborators in the Trattoria events, Maki Suzuki, Alex Rich and Kajsa Stahl.

The exhibition graphics and communication, also designed by Suzuki, Rich and Stahl, includes a specially designed catalogue.

Gamper, who recently received a Wallpaper* Design Award for the ‘Best Alchemist’, has just sold 100 chairs (from the project ‘100 chairs in 100 days’) to a Milanese gallery, and the Total Trattoria is an opportunity to see his new work in an unusual format.