Considered the utmost aesthetic expression of human creativity, art has evolved over time to include craftsmanship and design, tangible aspects of daily life that have garnered increasing value and dignity.

Design, in particular, emerges today as the most active artistic manifestation in the pursuit of new expressions, materials, and solutions. When design encounters a material capable of being extraordinarily current yet evoking the past, a magical alchemy ensues, captivating each of us with irresistible charm.

Among the many materials recently investigated and thoughtfully rescued from oblivion to become fundamental components of contemporary design is Abonos™, a submerged fossil wood carrying the memory of remote eras – possibly dating back to the time of the great glaciations. Its surfaces bear indelible marks, recording the actions of the natural elements that guarded it jealously through the centuries.

Abonos™ is a wood with a unique destiny. Primarily sourced from rivers in the Balkan region, it has often faced substantial floods that covered fallen tree trunks with soil, sand, and gravel – dragged and then submerged by the force of water. The elements have created ideal conditions for these trunks of various essences – oak, beech, poplar, ash, elm – to be preserved for millennia, reaching us without losing any of their properties.

For such a singular and precious wood, kindly preserved by the hand of nature, a similarly unique extraction process guided by a profound respect for the environment was developed. The task of bringing Abonos™ back to light and revealing its characteristic veins is entrusted to humans who immerse themselves in watercourses to free it from the weight of sediment. The trunks are secured with ropes tied to oxygen-inflated balloons, gently carrying them to the surface – a “technical” procedure imbued with a nuance of enchanted poetry.

Extraordinary materials like Abonos™, capable of meeting the demands of refined and exclusive design while being modernly eco-sustainable – preventing the unnecessary felling of trees – and simultaneously “telling” an ancient story, remind us that nature, if we pause to listen, is always capable of surprising us. On their surfaces, time has left a deep imprint, revealing a rediscovered beauty, innate and irreplicable, a testimony to its uniqueness. Today, the responsibility lies with all of us to collect its legacy and keep its memory alive.

This narrative was made possible thanks to the collaboration of Carlo and Filippo Tuzzi, innovators in material research and advocates of sustainable manufacturing, ensuring a concrete commitment to scrupulously respecting the ecosystem.

L'articolo The Rediscovered Beauty  proviene da Paola Lenti.

On the hills of Como, where the city offers a view of the lake from above, there is a social tailoring workshop where accessories are sewn – bags, backpacks, but also dresses, trousers, and blazers – and stories and relationships of people who came from afar, fleeing poverty and war, are sewn up. “Torn” stories that need care, attention, listening: in need, in fact, to be re-sewn.

CouLture Migrante – this is the name of the tailoring atelier – does it with needle and thread, with machines running fast on offcuts and remnants to give shape to accessories entirely crafted by hand, unique because different from one another. And meanwhile, it reconstructs broken identities and restores their dignity through work.

video © Maurizio Natta

Some of these stories intertwined with Paola Lenti company’s that, since its inception, has set itself the goal of combining business and ethics and to pursue a virtuous model that would enhance quality but even before people. A model that would preserve the environment, reduce waste, and give value to what others would discard.

This vision has a lot in common with that of the social atelier in Como, established in 2019 with the aim of promoting qualified vocational training for people at risk of social exclusion, such as migrants, and accompanying them on a path preparatory to professional integration, teaching them to produce high-quality tailoring products from recycled fabrics from the local chain of Como. Here is the common thread connecting the two realities: a thread that sews and gives new life to fabrics and stories.

The collaboration with CouLture Migrante started in 2022 when Paola Lenti proposed to Fernando and Humberto Campana – the Brazilian designers famous for their creations crafted with poor or waste materials – to conceive together a collection that would exclusively use the processing remnants of the company. The desire was to give life to a project based on sustainability and respect for the environment but also ethics, inclusion, and, not last, social responsibility. During the design phases, the idea arose to entrust the crafting of the textile components of the collection – named Metamorfosi – to people in situations of marginality but with experience in sewing and tailoring. Hence, Paola Lenti looked for a local craftsmanship reality that would commit to the same values shared with the designers and with which to “weave” an unprecedented alliance. And the thread led to Como.

Victoria and Saly Samba, hailing from Ghana and Senegal respectively, have been warmly embraced by the company. Guided by skilled tailors and artisans nurtured in the workshops of Meda, they embarked on a six-month training journey, aspiring to achieve professional independence. During that period, they acquainted themselves with the intricacies of fabrics, yarns, and cords, unveiling their unforeseen possibilities. Through a simple crochet technique, the core of a cord, when opened up and “ruffled,” transforms into a textile seaweed, imparting a unique character to the seating series envisioned by the Campana Brothers. A collection that also bears the imprint of diverse cultures, vibrant and overflowing with colours.

Today, the collaboration with CouLture Migrante is enhanced by further meaning. Paola Lenti has asked the atelier to produce the “Backpack CM” – the flagship product of the atelier’s accessories collection – exclusively using the materials of the company. Fabrics with different colours, weight, and thickness, originally aimed to upholster outdoor and indoor furnishings, have been transformed this way into unique accessories, not only because they are different from one another. Also, in this case, the “raw material” consists of the remnants of previous processing, while the hands that shape the backpacks are those of the people that CouLture Migrante has welcomed, trained, and then employed in their own atelier.

The first backpacks tailored by CouLture Migrante will be gifted to architects, designers, and journalists of the sector on the occasion of an event that will take place in the flagship store Paola Lenti in Miami during the next edition of Art Basel Miami. Saly Samba and Victoria are giving the finishing touches to the pieces departing for Florida, while Chieck – called Zé – from Gambia, employed by CouLture Migrante and now a true master in the tailoring art, makes the remnants slide quickly under the needle of the sewing machine, to a rhythm that resonates like music. Actually today, also life stories are being re-sewn: his own, Saly Samba’s, employed part-time at Paola Lenti, and Victoria’s, that will soon be employed in the tailoring department of a silk factory in Como. It is another circle that closes; or rather, it opens to generate shared value.

L'articolo Paola Lenti and CouLture Migrante: Together to Mend Fabrics and Stories proviene da Paola Lenti.

The fourth episode of Face to face is dedicated to Simona Sporchia, a master in the contemporary interpretation of the mosaic. Growing up in Milan, Simona was one of those little girls who always carried her sketchbook with her. She portrayed people, landscapes, and nature. Every chance she got, she’d arm herself with coloured pencils and give free rein to her imagination.
The artistic high school represented a natural landing place at the end of middle school. Simona discovered a passion for colours and materials; artistic techniques are the foundation for finding her expressive language.

She continued her studies at the Faculty of Architecture, but her heart was elsewhere: Simona felt the need to shape her thoughts with her hands, to return to her old love for a less icy and reasoned material. «I feel like art is a calling,» she says. She remembers the power of certain mosaic masterpieces she studied in school. It is where her inner gaze is focused. She drops out of university and enrolls in a mosaic school to learn the technique; she becomes a master mosaicist and opens her own workshop in Monza.

The encounter with Paola Lenti occurs during the first lockdown’s silence. They worked by assonance in that suspended atmosphere; in the warp and weft of the collection’s fabrics, they captured the same foundations of the mosaic composition: tesserae and joints, while intertwining and matching, create a decoration, just like the threads woven on the loom Furthermore, both realized that the combination of more shades determines the final colour equally in the mosaic and the company fabrics.

Together, they decide to subvert the traditional mosaic technique to create tesserae with different shapes and dimensions, round for example; they strip the joint of its function as a “hinge” to make it a background that recalls the chromatic palette of the collection products with which it is combined.

A new and contemporary vision of the mosaic emerges, where even the materials used support the desire to convey unprecedented suggestions: ceramics, recycled glass, silica powders, and oxides give rise to tesserae that differ from one another and in exclusive colours. The end result is a series of modules for flooring, side tables, and large table tops that have become part of the collection.

Nerikomi, a Japanese ceramic production technique, inspired the most recent experiments. Simona Sporchia creates coloured ceramic tesserae in her Monza workshop, which she then cuts, fires, and inserts on backgrounds made of concrete agglomerates and natural materials such as marble and recycled shards. The Venetian floor served as inspiration, with its chromatic bases in various shades punctuated by coloured grits.

Face to face with
Simona Sporchia, Monza

Interview by Anna Vullo
Director Maurizio Natta
Cinematographer Fabrizio Polla Mattiot @ateliermistral
Filmed by Maurizio Natta, Fabrizio Polla Mattiot @ateliermistral, Gianlorenzo Bernabò di Negro
Audio post production Top Digital
Soundtrack Universal Music Publishing Ricordi Srl

L'articolo Face to face with Simona Sporchia proviene da Paola Lenti.

Alessandra Malfatti fell in love with “grand feu enamelling” during an exposition of Paolo De Poli, a renowned Paduan enameller who worked with Gio Ponti. She was seduced by its dazzling colours, the reflections, and the shimmering luminosity of the enamelled surfaces.

Since then, she has nurtured the dream to learn to work with fire to reproduce that magic. For the mystery of enamel is generated by the fire: letting melt powder of coloured glass on metal surfaces in kilns at extremely high temperatures.

Graphic designer, already used to designing little objects, Malfatti enrolled in an art school. There, she met two excellent masters, Graziano Visintin and Maria Rosa Franzin, and she specializes with Ennio Cestonaro, a polyhedric artist and an expert in enamel.

The path is marked. Driven by the desire to develop her expressive style, she establishes a laboratory on the outskirts of Padua, purchases the first kilns, and begins chromatic research to select the best glazes.

«The absolute seduction of enamel lies precisely in the colour» Malfatti explains. «In the nuances, shades, and combinations that can be achieved».

This is what binds her to Paola Lenti. They started by imagining surfaces that can be combined with the company’s collections: movable backdrops, bookshelves, and table tops.

A complex technique that originated in the Mediterranean between the fourteenth and thirteenth centuries BC. and is now used by very few artists worldwide.

Alessandra Malfatti chose copper as a support material; her inspiration comes from nature in all of its changing forms and innumerable shades. Another common ground: the family lexicon shared with Paola Lenti.

From the observation of the luxuriant vegetation of the Padua Botanical Garden – Alessandra Malfatti’s place of the heart – an installation of philodendron leaves in enamelled copper arises which, suspended from the ceiling, restores the atmosphere of a tropical forest.

Colours and veins derive from a skilful stratification of the enamels, while the movement of the leaves is forged manually when the copper comes out of the kiln and when the material is still ductile. Finally, fire puts its indelible mark on it, since different temperatures and firing times can produce signs, chiaroscuro and transparencies that are different each time. This is the mystery that Malfatti had sensed in De Poli’s works.

Experimentation goes on. “I am conducting several experiments with the idea of creating a sort of fantastic herbarium in various shades, from green to earth,” the Paduan artist declares. “Currently, these are tiny plates that are always made of enamelled copper and have simple symbols that may represent a leaf or a cactus. They might evolve into furniture, items, or something else in the future”.

To give depth to the images, Malfatti uses both transparent and opaque enamels. «It is precisely this feeling of depth, which is produced through the colour and which varies according to the light, that makes each piece precious».

Face to face
with Alessandra Malfatti, Padova

Interview by Anna Vullo
Director Maurizio Natta
Cinematographer Fabrizio Polla Mattiot @ateliermistral
Filmed by Maurizio Natta, Fabrizio Polla Mattiot @ateliermistral, Gianlorenzo Bernabò di Negro
Audio post production Top Digital
Soundtrack Universal Music Publishing Ricordi Srl

L'articolo Face to face with Alessandra Malfatti proviene da Paola Lenti.

To meet Nicolò Morales we went to Caltagirone, in the heart of south-eastern Sicily, where the landscape unfolds in an ups and downs of hills and mountains.

A harsh land of contrasts and chiaroscuro. This is where Morales lives and works, the protagonist of the second episode of Face to face, a series of video interviews conceived to unveil how the unique pieces of the Paola Lenti collections are brought to life.

Morales is a master ceramist, the rebellious son of a tradition that every year attracts thousands of tourists to the city. His creations inevitably draw inspiration from classical canons, but from a very young age, with his first experiences in the workshop, he felt the urgency to find his own path: in a stubborn and opposite direction.

Intolerant of standard productions and colours, he travels the countryside and collects soils and minerals. Manganese, copper, cobalt oxide: the basis of the shades offered by the territory that he then grounds and fires, like an alchemist.

For Paola Lenti, the master ceramist from Caltagirone produces tables, side tables and movable backdrops in hand-painted ceramic, with a technique that leaves colours deliberately fluid, creating this way shades that change depending on the light. Unique pieces whose value lies in the extra-ordinary beauty, as well as in the unmistakable craftsmanship.

«Paola Lenti was looking for unusual finishes» explains Morales while kneading clay in his workshop. « I showed her what I was experimenting with and it immediately created a connection, a symbiosis of ideas. Obviously, we look in the same direction».

«For those who, like me, grew up immersed in tradition it is not easy to innovate», he adds at the end of the interview. «Paradoxically, when you depart from it you are considered a subversive. And I am happily subversive».

Face to face
with Nicolò Morales, Caltagirone

Interview by Anna Vullo
Director Maurizio Natta
Cinematographer Fabrizio Polla Mattiot @ateliermistral
Filmed by Maurizio Natta, Fabrizio Polla Mattiot @ateliermistral, Gianlorenzo Bernabò di Negro
Audio post production Top Digital
Soundtrack Universal Music Publishing Ricordi Srl

L'articolo Face to face with Nicolò Morales proviene da Paola Lenti.

What has always distinguished Paola Lenti is research. Not only in its specific realm – yarns, fabrics, colours – in which it has established itself as an avant-garde company, but also in the field of other materials, provided they have a story to tell. It is these stories that Paola Lenti seeks out, along with the skills, the passion, the beauty they bring with them and the manual dexterity handed down from one generation to the next. As it is in her DNA. 

From these stories, exclusive collaborations with artists-artisans selected throughout the country arose, in line with a philosophy that has chosen to favor the excellence of Made in Italy. Over the years, the collections have been enhanced with new families of products designed to dialogue with the company’s furnishings and colours, in tune with a harmonious and yet heterogeneous living concept. Different materials – ceramics, lava, metal and glass – have brought to life products, which are exclusive because they are made with ancient techniques and crafted, painted and finished by hand. Unique pieces that have contributed to making Paola Lenti brand unmistakable all over the world.

Marella Ferrera is the protagonist of the first episode. She is Sicilian and heir to a tailor’s shop that has been a point of reference for Catania high society since the 1960s: grand evening gowns, elaborately embroidered wedding dresses; suggestions that recall the atmospheres of the well-known Italian novel Il Gattopardo together with nonconformist proposals, such as the synthetic fur collars that anticipate the 1968 eagerness to sweep away bourgeois conventions.

Marella was in search of her own personal path. In the nineties she makes her debut in Rome in the haute couture with the idea of narrating Sicily through traditional materials such as lava stone and ceramics. She reinterprets, experiments, deconstructs: a stylistic approach that will later allow her to tune in with the vision of Paola Lenti.

The meeting takes place in Sicily, where Marella Ferrera has returned to continue the narration of her origins by observing them up close. Paola Lenti asks her to use lava to dress living spaces. Together, they try to melt fragments of glass directly on the stone, with effects that evoke the colours of the sea, the shades of green of the gardens, the lava flows of Etna. Sciara is brought to life, a luminous and very resistant material that today covers the surfaces of tables, side tables and partition walls in the company’s collections. The study of local ceramic floorings has instead given rise to a collection of embroidered rugs that reveal the signs of the dominations of the island. The yarns are Paola Lenti’s technical ones, the workforce is a family heritage. They are Marella’s aunts, the same ones who once embroidered trousseaus and corsets in her mother’s tailor shop.

Face to face
with Marella Ferrera, Catania

Interview by Anna Vullo
Direction by Maurizio Natta
Filming by Gianlorenzo Bernabò di Negro, Maurizio Natta, Fabrizio Polla Mattiot
Editing by Fabrizio Polla Mattiot
Soundtrack Universal Music Publishing Ricordi Srl

L'articolo Face to face with Marella Ferrera proviene da Paola Lenti.

The desire to explain the body of thoughts that inspire the production choices of the Company is behind the idea to create a series of little precious volumes, printed on paper produced with sustainable raw materials and pictured by graphic designers, illustrators and artists: the Quaderni Paola Lenti.

A project against the flow in this digital era that returns the tactile pleasure of printed-paper and follows the thread of a reasoning on the importance of producing in a sustainable way that began with the inception of the company.

After Twiggy and Diade and after Eres, the two new issues of the Quaderni, Mottainai and Rope, have just been released.

The first is named after a concept originating from rural culture in Japan and Buddhist teachings, Mottainai, and that can be translated as What a waste! It is the ability to create with what is at hand, without squandering further resources while respecting humankind and the environment. A philosophy that draws on age-old heritage that places high value on parsimony but also gratitude for what is owned.

This thought has guided Paola Lenti in a project of recovery of production leftovers, restoring the value of yarns and materials produced in-house.

The volume Mottainai retraces the steps of this process, which brought about the eponymous collection of rugs, armchairs and poufs presented during the recent Fuorisalone in Milan. The same philosophy behind this concept inspired Metamorfosi as well, the series of unique pieces penned by Brazilian designers Fernando and Humberto Campana, equally produced with waste materials.

The forth issue of the series illustrates the genesis of Rope, the high tech yarn that, twenty years ago, has marked Paola Lenti’s debut in the realm of outdoor furniture, accelerating the company development.

Rope is a high performing synthetic yarn, resistant to water, UV rays, bacteria and 100% recyclable – hence sustainable – that over the years has originated dozens of different textile structures – cords, braids, strips. With these products, the company has produced rugs, upholstery and seating pieces of several signature collections.

Recently, it evolved into materials even more innovative like Twiggy and Diade. Twenty years after its introduction, Rope is still unique and inimitable. As yet, many of Paola Lenti’s products are recognizable thanks to this yarn.

Images in Mottainai are by Francesca Crisafulli and Carlo Nannetti – otherwise known as Mook – artists specialized in the creation of visual using all manner of recycled materials. The drawing in Rope are by Vessela Nikolova, whose visual research encompasses the area of fashion, design, photography and illustration.

L'articolo Mottainai and Rope, the new Quaderni Paola Lenti on the company’s sustainable choices proviene da Paola Lenti.

Be responsible. Do not waste. Reuse. Find a way to give new life to thousands of offcuts, fabric and cord remnants, selvages, processing leftovers. A multicolored wealth of yarns and materials that are still performing – still alive – normally destined for landfills. What to do with it? Paola Lenti began to ask herself the question a few years ago, while pondering over the profound meaning of sustainability, a term now overused. How can we be sustainable, this was the exact question, when every year we produce more than 10 tons of leftovers, the disposal of which requires energy, people, machinery? Furthermore, why define them as waste or treat them as such, when they could turn into something unexpected?

Following the thread of this thought, Paola Lenti metaphorically began to fill drawers: in practice, dozens of boxes of different materials meticulously catalogued by color, type of fabric, size. A memory archive, a piece of company history.

In order for that thought to take shape, however, a new sign was needed, capable of revealing the essence of the material by changing – somehow shaking up – its original appearance. Brazilian brothers Fernando and Humberto Campana, renowned all over the world for their iconic pieces produced with waste materials, could have been the ideal partners.
Different in style – nonconformists, out-of-the-box -, but at the same time close to Paola Lenti for the philosophy that has guided their design career: the urgency of identifying a way of producing that combines ethics and aesthetics, the importance of creating from existing materials. Furthermore, the common sensibility for colour, more instinctive in the case of Campana, the result of a long chromatic research for Paola Lenti. Finally – no less pivotal – a shared vision of social responsibility: the awareness that there can be no ethics without inclusion and that, therefore, it is necessary to look for talents even among disadvantaged people; give them the deserved value, make them flourish. So that talent is not wasted either.

Paola Lenti sent to Brazil boxes full of textile remnants to explain to the brothers Campana the potentialities of this project. The answer: “This is a treasure”. A series of remote meetings led to the partnership. Humberto Campana designed shapes and volumes of the first prototypes; Paola Lenti shared her knowledge of the materials and her innate sense of colour, the brand hallmark. A team of artisans in the Meda factory got to work to bring the two thoughts together.

Test after test, matter regenerated and acquired a new form. Rope, Paola Lenti first high tech yarn for the outdoors, revealed the versatility of polypropylene, the material, of which it is composed. Naturally opening up, Rope cords have brought to life “flowers”, as soft as puffs in infinite shades, and expanses of “seaweeds”, silky to the touch, with which seats have been covered, inviting you to rest and play. With other fabric remnants, a rug has been designed with a patchwork effect; with still others the soft tubulars, similar to tentacles, which serve as backrests. The products finished, Humberto Campana commented:

Metamorfosi, this is the name of the new collection designed by Campana, draws inspiration from the natural world and its mutations. Morpho, Centopeia, Alicia, are organisms inhabiting our earth and our seas. The observer, though, is free to interpret appearance and shapes. The border with a work of art is very thin: they are unique pieces that arouse wonder.

Victoria and Saly Samba have been involved in the production of the prototypes from the social tailor’s shop CouLture Migrante in Como that uses itself discontinued fabrics for its products and offers job opportunities to migrant men and women at risk of social exclusion. This is the sign that includes: the people, Paola Lenti and Campana ideas. And all comes full circle.

L'articolo The seduction of Metamorphosis proviene da Paola Lenti.

Over the last twenty years, Paola Lenti has followed a thread: durable, long lasting and in its own way revolutionary. A yarn with a round sounding name – Rope – and an unusual textile appearance that has marked the history of the industrial development of the company.

It is the early 2000s. Paola Lenti is looking for an innovative material for the outdoors. She turns over in her hands a sample of a technical fabric from an Eastern European manufacturer, intrigued by the fact that warp and weft are the same size. She envisages a possibility there: to produce a round yarn with that dimensions, something similar to the lines used in sailing, capable of resisting water and ultraviolet rays. A yarn to be transformed into performing outdoor fabrics.

The research focuses on polypropylene, a not very noble fiber, nonetheless light and waterproof thanks to the “closed” structure of its molecules that prevents water from entering the fiber itself. Two intrinsic qualities that make it ideal for the outdoors. 

Rope, however, is still a long way off. Literature on polypropylene does not exist; it is necessary to test its resistance, functionality and lightfastness.

With the tenacity of newbies and a contagious enthusiasm for everything that needs to be invented, Paola Lenti embarks on a sometimes-naive quest: she uncovers shoe lace manufacturers in the Yellow Pages, regularly visits trade fairs in search of answers to her questions, calls on an automotive expert to verify the robustness and durability of fabrics as well as on weavers. Little by little she realizes that polypropylene, if properly processed, represents “the future”. She brings the pieces together and arrives at the Chemistry Department of the University of Turin to refine the research phases.

A high performing synthetic yarn that has the texture of a natural fabric to the touch, a peculiarity that has allowed it to cross the thresholds of indoor and fully establish itself even in interiors. This is one of the many reasons why Rope has given a new direction to the company: it is the “discovery” that has allowed it to establish a dialogue between inside and outside, to blur the boundaries between different environments to convey a fluid and harmonious domestic universe.

Thanks to its versatility, in these twenty years Rope has given rise to dozens of materials, from cords to weaves, from tubular “socks” to fabrics, which have become each time upholsteries for seating pieces or load-bearing structures of sofas, armchairs or sun beds. “And also outdoor rugs – Paola Lenti remembers -. A revolution for the times, when associating a rug to the outdoors sounded like an oxymoron”

Today many of Paola Lenti products are immediately recognizable thanks to that yarn, originated from an intuition, and to the extraordinary range of colors in which it is offered, which allows coordinating fabrics and materials of several collections.

And from the research on Rope, latest generation yarns, fabrics and materials arouse – Twiggy, Maris, Diade – even more performing and sustainable.

But that is another story.

L'articolo The intuition that has revolutionized the outdoor proviene da Paola Lenti.

A pronounced talent for design leads Nathalie Seiller Dejean first to graduate from the École Nationale Supérieure Des Beaux-Arts in Paris, and then to work as an illustrator for Le Monde and other newspapers.

It is a pair of shoes, painted for a friend, which changes her creative destiny. Indeed a famous Parisian shop notices them by chance and asks her to work with them. From that point on Dejean begins fantasizing about the idea of distinctive accessories and, reworking lace and precious materials from the past, discovered at local markets, she creates jewelry and accessories for hair that enchant designers and art galleries

“I was in all the Swiss cantons and in their markets, searching for these wonders,” explains Seiller Dejean, who, inspired by “rediscovered” nature, cuts and shapes by hand rough or already braided straw, transforming it into dream-like tiaras with a rustic charm, extremely rich in detail. “Wheat, symbol of universal prosperity, is equally celebrated in history by kings and peasants: it is no accident that the goddess of agriculture, Ceres, is depicted with a crown of wheat.”

To make them even more luminous, the golden brilliance of these jewels, ancient in essence but with a contemporary lightness, is obtained by dying them with tea: all natural, done in a completely homemade manner by the artist herself.

Translated from Italian by Marguerite Shore.

L'articolo The Poetry of Braiding proviene da Paola Lenti.

The “casa dei topi” (house of mice) is an open space full of books, hidden in a Milanese courtyard. The wording that welcomes visitors at the entrance – La casa dei topi, in fact – is not meant to warn those who enter, but ironically indicates the owners of the space, the founders of the publisher of young adults’ books “Topipittori” and of Calamus, a company specializing in design communication.

A large window frames a small internal garden full of plants. Illustrated fairy tales and books about the masters of architecture and design are scattered everywhere. Zoboli and Canton are the editors of Quaderni Paola Lenti, a series conceived to depict the philosophy that inspires and guides the company’s choices.

A project beyond the ordinary: many texts, images created by illustrators and artists, eco-friendly papers. “Produce well and with a sense of responsibility, this is the thought we want to share and spread with Quaderni”, is the synthesis of Paola Lenti.

The Quaderno Twiggy and Diade, with its essential graphics and illustrations digitally elaborated by Studio Fludd, retraces the steps that led to the development of Twiggy, an innovative single-material polypropylene yarn, and later on of Diade, the weight-bearing material obtained by coupling a rigid plate with a fabric made of Twiggy. Indeed, innovation lays in both materials being fully recyclable.

The experimentation of performing materials goes hand in hand with the attention to craftsmanship. The second Quaderno, Eres, actually reflects this dimension: it is a journey to discover ancient cultivation techniques and fibers such as linen and hemp, protagonists of the new Paola Lenti collection along with other more exotic ones such as bamboo, raffia, igusa and abaca.

Fil rouge of Quaderni is the path undertaken over the years in the direction of greater sustainability. “It is one of the cornerstones that prompted the company to talk about itself,” says Giovanna Zoboli. “In the case of Twiggy and Diade, sustainability is expressed in recyclability and durability, in Eres in the use of completely natural materials, for both upholsteries and paddings, processed, wherever possible, in the places of origin and without resorting to chemical treatments”.

The Eres collection contains an invitation to care: for the environment and for the products, which are delicate because they are natural and therefore need to be treated with particular attention.

Attention and care equally feature the layout of Quaderni Paola Lenti: natural paper, no glue, pages sewn together with a recyclable cotton thread.  “Eres illustrations are penned by Lucia Pescador, an artist who interprets nature in a personal and poetic way”, concludes Giovanna Zoboli.

L'articolo Interview with the editors of the Quaderni Paola Lenti <br>“Research on materials makes the difference” proviene da Paola Lenti.

How thin must a thread be to deserve to be called Twiggy? When Paola Lenti described to me the multi-filament polypropylene yarn that she uses for her creations, I couldn’t help but think of the English model from the ‘60s – although her allure holds up in spite of the years – who revolutionized the idea of wearability combined with feminine beauty. An esthetic ideal both ethereal and ironic, irremediably tied to the idea of perfection. Twiggy yarn is a potentially infinite line, harmonious, basic. It is modernity, functionality. 

Paola Lenti did not settle for the polypropylene threads already on the market; she wanted to do something more, creating extremely thin floss-like threads less than 2 millimeters thick, impalpable threads that, united in variable numbers, can be twisted, shaped, flattened to accommodate complex weaves and used in rope-like structures that are the designer’s stylistic signature. Assembling such thin threads, it is possible to play with shapes, but also with colors; scores of nuances are obtained by dying polymers in bulk (that is, dyed before being extruded), and uniting filaments of different colors with nearly endless chromatic options. And Twiggy, in particular, is an extremely thin fiber, capable of creating textile structures that, when reinforced, can replace a metal tube or a supporting element of a chair, thanks to its strength and tenacity. 

Cords that become wicker, fabrics that become three-dimensional structures. A result obtained through years of research that have made it possible to identify the best coating process in order to cover and strengthen the Twiggy yarn, making it moldable and extremely resistant and light. Paola Lenti’s Twiggy also has documented characteristics of sustainability. The yarn whose technological features we have praised is plastic. That’s right, widely loathed plastic. For there is no material that is more functional if you want to create objects that are durable and resistant to chemical and environmental pollution, to mold, to bacteria.

Because human imbecility has caused it to become an enormous ecological problem, abandoning it in the environment and in the seas, constructing articles designed to be used only once, even for just a few minutes. A waste, something that makes no sense. Used properly, plastic is an exceptional and fundamental material. Paola Lenti is well aware of this, and with her polypropylene Twiggy she creates chairs, carpets, panels, furnishings and much more. Combined with a 100% polypropylene sheet, Twiggy becomes Diade, a surface that simulates the roughness of fabric. And of course we are speaking of objects conceived to last, to acquire value over time, capitalizing on the investment.

While derived from a non-renewable source, Twiggy has sustainable contents. Paola Lenti talks about manufacturing with low environmental impact, with reduced use of chemical agents, an absence of PFC and phthalates, coating without solvents and the recovery and recycling of production waste. According to the designer’s view, there is room for manmade polymers as long as they are designed and produced to be circular, to ideally last forever, to be bio-based or to derive from their own recycling. An innovative trend that the polymer industry is pursuing with commitment.

The recyclability of polypropylene is a characteristic that has been broadly recognized in the scientific literature, and this could have been sufficient. But Paola Lenti wanted to do something more, subjecting samples of materials to recyclability tests at specialized laboratories. The result was a research project that allowed the Company to identify further lines for the improvement of the performance of the materials, and above all to reassure our clients about the behavior of furnishings and their end-of-life completion. Being mono-material, they are not only recyclable, but can give rise to a new, high-quality polymer, avoiding the production of non-renewable virgin materials.

Paola Lenti has utilized the methods indicated by regulation Iso 14021:2016 and has studied its own environmental claims, validated by an audit carried out last December by an accredited third party, Centrocot spa. To communicate the recyclability of its products, the Company has decided to use a Möbius triangle: simple and thorough, known internationally. We are accustomed to seeing the triangle formed by three arrows on packaging, and it seems strange to see it, for example, on a valuable chair. Instead, from now on every Paola Lenti product will be accompanied by the distinctive symbol of recyclability, as confirmation of the desire to clearly communicate to our clients the undeniable value of circularity.

Not only this: the Company is also collecting data to map throughout the world collectors and recyclers of polymers, in order to offer buyers correct instructions so they might dispose of products at the end of their life. Even though, as a consummate example of “Made in Italy,” Paola Lenti’s design has no planned obsolescence: it comes into the world to offer visual and functional joy of unlimited duration.

[Translated from Italian by Marguerite Shore]

Twiggy and Diade, the recyclable mono-materials of the outdoor collection

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L'articolo Paola Lenti’s filamentary philosophy proviene da Paola Lenti.