“It is most interesting to me to have a poet design a table, a painter design a credenza, and an architect design a spoon,” declared Cleto Munari, a design patron and visionary, in a rare interview published a couple of years ago. Back in the early 1980s Munari, a relatively unknown figure even in design circles, embraced a cross-disciplinary approach to design typical of the contemporary and commissioned a unique jewelry collection to an incredible team of architects. Ettore Sottsass, Michele De Lucchi, Peter Eisenman, Hans Hollein, Arata Isozaki and Alessandro Mendini are only a few prominent thinkers whose vibrant, conceptual and witty designs feature in this incredible 150-piece collection. If you care to find more about this astonishing project, you will have to rely on an out-of-print 1988 book simply titled “Jewelry by Architects”, edited by Barbara Radice and published by Rizzoli. Let the online hunt begin!
