Our story
Established in 1998, the project Le Morandine is a tribute to a grand master of Italian art, Giorgio Morandi, an artist who, with particular intensity and elegance, was able to shed new light on the humble objects of everyday life: vases, boxes, bowls, cups, jugs, bottles.
Those simple "things" that design often has to deal with.
Starting from the series of candles, the Le Morandine project has developed over time, achieving success and creating a real trend.
In 2011, the trendsetter Lidewij Edelkoort, had defined this work "perfect for the times" and had anticipated its popularity.
In 2013 Le Morandine have been selected by the prestigious ADI Design Index 2013.
In 2020 they have been included in the book " I Talenti italiani: mente, mano, macchina" by A. Cappellieri and M. Pirola, Fondazione Cologni / Marsilio Editori.
Photo Katerina Di Leva
Exhibitions
2021 Artigianato&Palazzo - Firenze
2021 Il Ponte casa d’aste, Milano
2020 Tornabuoniart, London UK
2019 Zoom. On Capri In Design - Capri
2018 Onlife. Millennials at Home – Milano
2018 Morandi tra le mani, Adele-C - Milano, IT
2017 The Designer Studio - Paris
2016 W. Women in Italian Design - Milano
2014 Il design italiano oltre le crisi - Milano
2012 Italian Genius Now - Porto Alegre
2012 Fare Lume. Candele tra Arte e Design - Milano
2011 Degni di Nota. Design in Italy in critical times - Berlin
The designer
Sonia Pedrazzini is an eclectic and versatile Italian designer with a Mediterranean DNA, she grew up on the island of Capri and graduated in product design from the ISIA in Rome. Sonia designs for the cosmetics and high perfumery industry, at the same time she has developed more experimental and research works exploring the possibilities of jewelry and high craftsmanship. Besides her work as a designer, she also teaches and writes. From 2001 to 2010 she was Editorial Director of the packaging culture magazine Impackt (Edizioni Dativo). Her design approach is philosophical and poetic. She draws her inspiration from the world of contemporary folklore, from art and nature. Her works are characterized by a strong chromatic content and formal elegance and have been published and exhibited in Italy and abroad.
Giorgio Morandi
Giorgio Morandi, (Bologna, 1890 - 1964) painter and engraver, was one of the protagonists of Italian art of the twentieth century. His painting can be defined as unique and universally recognized, famous his still lifes, so motionless, so silent, grazed by that inimitable opaque light. Reserved, with noble traits, gentle both in his private and professional life, Morandi has always featured for his enigmatic but strongly positive personality.
From 1910 to 1964 he lived in Bologna, in Via Fondazza 36, with his mother and three sisters and where the house-museum is currently located, a place where the atelier has been reconstructed as it was at the time when the artist lived there.
It is said that Morandi, during the last days of his life, while he was sick in bed, continued to draw traces and suspended shapes in the air with his finger.
Even today we can see - in the room that had seen him work all his life - on a surface marked out in pencil - the last composition he was working on, three simple objects: a flask, a sphere, a box.
Morandi in your hands
Marco Senaldi
"Surely for everyone, Giorgio Morandi means something. As soon as we hear his name, our minds recall the famous still life paintings, so motionless, so silent, and touched by that
inimitable, opaque light. If you mention “Morandi”, you immediately remember his bottles-like how mentioning “Dali” brings to mind melting clocks or thinking of the colorful Marilyn when mentioning “Warhol”. However, when we distance ourselves from those images we already have in our mind, and we deal with the actual works of art, then things change. Thousands of still life paintings by Morandi exist; while they are all similar, they are all irrefutably “Morandian” and Morandi’s genius plays a sophisticated hide-and-seek game through which he showed parts of himself in each of the paintings, but he never entirely revealed himself in any of them.
This indefinable quality heads us off in the right direction.
Photo Il Ponte Casa D'aste
To understand him, we must refer back to this “true” Morandi. This is exactly the core meaning of the project “Le Morandine,” which you now have in your hands- a conceptual design work by Sonia Pedrazzini. Game, hobby, pedagogical tool, artistic creation, décor, and design for your mind- you may call it as you wish, and it does not matter.
In the physical shape of wax candles, here Morandi’s bottles are embodied, and you will have the opportunity to become like the artist in his world, which is both commonplace and far reaching.
You may set down these shapes casually, or you may want to move them around to find the perfect arrangement, which will remain unaltered as long as you wish. Or you may, every morning, or even every hour, change their positioning, either slightly or drastically, looking for a better set-up. You may even just move them around on a whim, as a game, or yielding to sudden inspiration.
Let your gaze pause on these shapes, renditions inspired by those created by Morandi. Let their hues, faithfully taken from his paintings, penetrate you. You may place them on the guiding diagram, which was obtained from Morandi’s very own. Now it is only up to you, and you may do as you please. You can be the artist who plays with the hidden meaning of ordinary shapes and objects.
Whatever you will decide to do, while participating, you will have “understood” Morandi, and, most of all, he will have “understood” you."
In order to better understand Morandi’s works, we must analyze the process he followed to create them-which was of paramount importance in their creation. If we want to understand Morandi, we must visit his studio apartment at Via Fondazza, in Bologna. Only in this place, while looking at the tables he utilized and seeing the bottles which were the protagonists of his still life paintings, do we begin to understand the unbelievable project which kept him so active throughout his life. The surfaces of these tables, covered with tracing paper, are completely filled with pen and red or blue pencil marks. They are charts, roadmaps, paths, and labyrinths according to which the artist, in his daily experimentation, moved his bottles and other objects, varying from one composition to another, in an endless game of changing arrangements. This observation can bring Morandi closer to our feelings. Morandi is, without doubt, the last of the great Italian painters who respected tradition, since he felt he belonged to it; however, and this is even more surprising, Morandi is also a completely contemporary artist, whose art cannot be separated from the process through which it was obtained.
Photo @ilpontecasa d'aste