Triennale Milano and Fondazione Cologni dei Mestieri d’Arte are launching a collaboration to present the Mestieri d’Arte e Design exhibition cycle in the Triennale Picture Gallery space. Crafts Culture. The first project of the collaboration is “Mirabilia”, which brings together a series of extraordinary jewels by great Milanese artisans, between Renaissance legacies and contemporary high manufacturing. Antonini Milano has the privilege of exhibiting the “Tebe” collier de chien designed and created in 1990. An object composed of 6 strands of 245 gray baroque pearls divided, contained and “supported” by two sinuous elements in white gold on the surface of which are set 102 diamonds.
Since the Visconti and then Sforza domination, Milan has been one of the most important production centers for the creation of “masterpieces”, i.e. objects of the highest craftsmanship often made with rare and valuable techniques: from auroseric cloths to the working of rock crystal, from damascened armor to jewels and lace, from inlaid cabinets to embossed silver to musical instruments. This precious legacy has remained hidden in the Milanese productive fabric: and if today the Lombard metropolis is the recognized capital of design and fashion, it is also because in the DNA of the city runs this vocation for artisanal excellence which has always been able to enter into dialogue with the spirit of the times, often anticipating it.
A contemporary Wunderkammer: the works are arranged according to an ideal symbolic order, to obtain the result of surprising and provoking wonder with sometimes even surprising transitions between one piece and another, to enhance the different scale of perception. The images of the making-of of the objects offer a point of view that goes beyond the product to also reveal the process. Visibility and value to a significant selection of Milanese art masters who still today create original, authentic and creative objects, which inspire wonder and admiration. About forty contemporary pieces representing the “secrets of the trade” of as many artisan ateliers and factories present in the city of Milan, produced in one-of-a-kind pieces or in small series, with profound artistic and cultural meaning.
