The Campana Brothers are no strangers to working in rattan. Their experiments with wicker have included mixing it with plastic garden chairs for their TransPlastic range in 2007 to sculptures embedded with glass light fittings in 2010. Their latest – the first new design we have seen from Sao Paulo-based Fernando and Humberto in quite a while – is decidedly more utilitarian. Vime is a table centerpiece designed for Alessi that can be used to hold fruit or display flowers.
Made of woven rattan fibre, the centerpiece has a wide, flat base that rises up at the centre to resemble a stem. The central cylinder is a hollow cavity into which a fresh or dried branch can be inserted.
Like the mushroom-shaped Amanita lamp created for Alessi in 2012, the Vime centerpiece shows off the curvaceous potential of this traditional weaving technique in a continuous, undulating volume.
“Vime” (from the Latin vimen) is the Portuguese translation of rattan. There’s a certain irony to the brothers using a handcraft technique for one of Italy’s most successful design manufacturers.
“The Vime centerpiece aims to revitalise handcraft traditions that are disappearing while giving them a contemporary vision, that incorporates them into an industrial process to rescue the human element in a highly mechanised company,” note the brothers.
The natural materials and hand manufacturing mean that each centrepiece is unique.
