Mattia Bonetti will return to David Gill Gallery with new work that embraces both furniture in beautiful groupings of limited-edition works and an exquisite range of carpets for Diurne entitled Eléments. 

Customary to the designer's practice, Bonetti has dug deep into his imagination, knowledge of art and design history (especially embracing the baroque, rococo and surrealism), ability with colour, and extraordinary understanding of materials to conjure these new ideas. Like a magician, the results emerge from the sleight of hand that underpins his oeuvre, as he combines these many facets of inspiration. First, Bonetti makes exquisite drawings of pieces, then these are translated exactly into three-dimensional form. “I continue to have new ideas all the time,’ says Bonetti, “and although they might use the same language, I always twist things to create difference.”

The language of the EATON series is a simple one, punctuated with thoughtful embellishment. The bronze desk has a vellum top embossed with an organic pattern designed by Bonetti. The shades of the lamp are made of pure raw silk, while its legs are in the very slenderest cast bronze. While the use of bronze allies the pieces to the world of sculpture, from the Renaissance to Giacometti, the finials that adorn the tops of the shelves and the lamp’s cast feet brings the work back to the world of furniture, architecture and decoration. 

“I like to think that this series is simple and sober,” says Bonetti. “The use of materials is minimal, clear and exacting but there are still intriguing flourishes that make these things you can live with for a long time.”

The LOZENGE series is based on a repetitive diamond pattern, adapted differently for each piece. “The lozenge is a geometric pattern, but an especially dynamic one,” explains Bonetti. “Although it is made of straight lines, to the eye it is made of two triangles – one a mirror image of the other – which gives it a particular energy. You could almost say it’s a two-dimensional pattern with a three-dimensional effect.” 

Pieces include armchairs, a chest of drawers, a coffee table, a cabinet and lamps. The lozenge form is adapted differently to each type. The cabinet, for example, has grilled bronze doors – the openwork of the metal making them lighter both physically and visually. For the coffee table, the diamond pattern is turned on its side and used horizontally. 

It marks a change of direction for the designer. “I’m usually more at ease with fluid, sensual shapes and curves,” says Bonetti. “Here, I have found a way to make straight lines flexible, though for me it is still a more regimented group than usual.” There is, however, colour at play here. The cabinet is in wood hand painted in the subtlest Dior Grey; the chest of drawers in a delicate pale sage.