Milan 2014: design collective Something Good launched its second Italian-made collection of home and office accessories in Milan earlier this month, with pieces by Odoardo Fioravanti, Oscar Diaz and Tomas Kral (+ slideshow).
The collection, named Our Friends are Something Good Too, includes objects for office, living and kitchen environments, produced in Italy and made from Italian materials.
"Not only are all the pieces made in Italy, but we also work with specialists of a specific technology: Venice-based glass blowers, Pordenone-area wood carvers, Vicenza-based ceramicists and so on, because it's important for us delivering not luxury, but quality," Giorgio Biscaro, co-founder of Something Good told Dezeen.
Companies who choose to produce designs in Italy instead of outsourcing to other countries are becoming increasingly rare according to the president of design brand Alessi, who told Dezeen that the country's design manufacturing capability is at risk of disappearing in an interview earlier this month.
For the collection, which was shown in Spazio Rossana Orlandi in Milan this month, London-based designer Oscar Diaz created a salt and pepper shaker set with a turned cork base and hand-blown glass top.
Split is a set of painted ceramic containers by Slovakian designer Tomas Kral with miniature planes that divide and organise the space within.
Italian designer Odoardo Fioravanti has created a ceramic candle holder called Beaver with a little stem that was designed as an allusion to a beaver tail.
The other pieces have been designed by the founders of Something Good: Giorgio Biscaro, Zaven (Enrica Cavarzan and Marco Zavagno) and Matteo Zorzenoni.
"We like to think about our lineup as an affective collection of objects: useful products users can have an interaction with, but above all we deliver objects people would fall in love with, because of their aesthetic or values," Biscaro told Dezeen.
The Bumblebee oil lamp is constructed from two hand-blown glass orbs and shaped like an hour glass.
Other glass pieces include the Miss and Mrs pitchers with ribbed rounded bases and tapered coloured necks. The Ombra wine decanter features a mask-like metallised glass top.
Objects for the office include the long narrow iron Baguette paperweight and the laser cut striped Zebra paper rack.
