A di Alessi Girotondo Mocha Cup without Saucer, (AKK20)

In the tradition of the Family Follows Fiction series of plastic objects, Girotondo represents the outpost of playful metal design. This series was the first - and highly copied - example of the creation of an icon of contemporary design, founded on the most intimate and delicate of all the emotional languages - the child's language. In this case also, the packaging has been redesigned and the prices considerably reduced.

The original plan for the Girotondo series for Alessi called for a series of objects decorated with a chain of human cutouts. These plans eliminated or, better still, reduced the formal design of the object to a bare minimum, with everything hinging on the serial repetition of an iconographic and figurative element that everyone could recognise. The little man was the result of our search for a strong figurative signal that would immediately appeal the memory or, in other words, a sort of archetypal communication culture. The chain of little men is the same motif that children make with paper cut-outs. The idea was to treat stainless steel as if it were paper, having the little men circling the edge as if they were holding hands and keeping together the objects in the bowl with their own 'girotondo'.

Founder members of the Boldist movement, Stefano Giovannoni (La Spezia, 1954) and Guido Venturini (Alfonsine, 1957) graduated in architecture in Florence. They work and live in Milan. Since 1979 they have taught and carried out research at Florence Faculty of Architecture, and now also at the Domus Academy in Milan. In 1985 they set up King Kong Productions, concerning themselves with avant-garde research in design, interiors, fashion and architecture. Their focus was on cartoons, science fiction, celluloid mythology, and the areas of imaginary and artificial fiction. They work an iconographic, primary and conceptual datum with a mixture of poetry and irony that supersedes the disciplinary conceptions of object form, composition and design.

"To be honest, I think that the 'King-Kongs', despite their indubitable intuition and great flair, have been lucky too. They were spot on with the 'playful style', they understood how important it is to work with 'emotional codes', but above all, the project came at the right time, and its place in the Alessi catalogue hit the spot! With hindsight, I'd say it was a typical case of allying the 'child code' to a catalogue like ours, until then dominated by the authority, status and style of great designer's masterpieces: a counterweight to then emerging talents of Rossi, Graves and Starck.

"[&] Those little King-Kong 'men' have turned up on the edging of objects that belong to the most consolidated Alessi traditions, such as our trays or baskets. Now they have multiplied and have set out to invade familiar territories (such as the chopping board and napkin holder) and unfamiliar ones (key ring, bookmark, candles). Their apotheosis, though, has to be 'Girotondo (Ring-around-the-rosy) Jewellery' (1998)" - Alberto Alessi, The Dream Factory

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