Tipstudio and De Castelli: affinities between metal and craft skills

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de castelli, monolite, sinestesia, stand, salone milano, tipstudio

De Castelli at Salone del Mobile.Milano 2023, ph. Alberto Parise

The excitement of the product? It’s created through research into materials. As in Monolìte and Sinestesia, which enhance the solidity and sensuousness of brass, inspired by natural erosions

Scouting the freshest collaborations identified at the latest edition of the Salone del Mobile.Milano. Among the new faces are Imma Matera and Tommaso Lucarini. Together since 2017 as TIPSTUDIO, based in Florence and Pietrasanta, they conduct research into materials with a highly poetic touch. In their first joint venture with the Treviso-based company De Castelli, active in metalworking for four generations, combining craft skills with industrial processes, TIPSTUDIO presented two furnishings in brushed brass with contrasting rough and irregular finishes on the inner parts, smooth and polished on the exteriors: Monolìte, a screen consisting of two symmetrical concave brass sheets that create a vertical architectural interplay, and Sinestesia, a console table with strongly sensuous and sculptural values.

We presented TIPSTUDIO and Albino Celato, CEO of De Castelli, with three quick questions.

albino celato, portrait, salone milano — Albino Celato, photo Studio Nuvole

tipstudio, portrait, salone milano — TIPSTUDIO, photo Tessa Chung

de castelli, sinestesia, consolle, metal, salone milano — De Castelli, Sinestesia, design TIPSTUDIO, ph. Alberto Parise

You design stories and narratives, you think craftsmanship and design. What was the origin of your collaboration with De Castelli, the company that launched you at the Salone del Mobile.Milano 2023 with two pieces that are already iconic - the Monolìte screen and the Sinestesia console table - capable of creating marked spatial qualities?

We believe that today it’s really crucial to give a deeper value to objects through storytelling, whether it’s embodied in their material qualities and process, or immaterial factors in terms of experience and empathy, which mature with the product to produce objects with a strong identity capable of keeping the story alive.

Our collaboration with De Castelli arose almost spontaneously, naturally, driven by the curiosity on our side to design and explore matter from a different viewpoint. We have a shared affinity based on metal and its expressive qualities.

We discussed the technique for processing semi-finished products, combining our more experimental approach to experience in metal casting with their production and craft capabilities.

Research is inherent in your working method. How do you combine the language of self-production with seriality? How do product design and experimentation interact? Can they benefit each other?

We see each project as the result of the process that generated it, the form simply becomes the output of research. We have a vision of the project that creates scope for experimentation and opens up new expressive and emotional worlds. There is a continuous interweaving between self-production and seriality: they’re closely correlated. Self-production is the supreme testing ground, freer as it is often independent and less bound up with productive and commercial logic. The projects that reach companies are then the evolution, the synthesis, of processes, details and research begun in the laboratory.

For instance, in Monolìte and Sinestesia we find an interplay of repetition and reflection, with a more serial character, if you like, that dovetails with the company’s extreme technical craftsmanship. Alike yet different elements are repeated in a delicate spatial interplay of voids and solids.

We pay close attention to the sensory qualities of projects through surface contrasts. Here the experimentation lay in the search for a surface finish that approached the spontaneous, unpredictable behavior of casts. The surface finishes of the products are inspired by the sediments of the molten metal as if they were natural erosions. The hand perceives the transition from smooth to eroded and one can read the three-dimensional movement of erosion on the sheet metal, De Castelli’s distinctive hallmark.

de castelli, monolite, separe, metal, salone milano — De Castelli, Monolìte, design TIPSTUDIO, ph. Alberto Parise

Matter and poetry, pragmatism and exploration, Tommaso and Imma: an unfailing dialogue between complementary opposites. Could you tell us about this? And the kind of dialogue you established with De Castelli?

It is antithesis that enhances the material, with the project evolving and maturing in it. Our way of approaching the project is very closely bound up with our two opposed and complementary personalities, in one case more design-based and conceptual in the other more material and artistic. We were born and raised in contact with marble, metal and ceramic workshops, but at the same time we have a training as designers. We believe that these two factors in our case at a certain point coincide and define a new vocabulary, a new identity capable in some cases of investigating a further artistic logic, but then contained within a design gaze attentive to the technical and productive factors.

We believe that the project creates the context in which we establish a constructive dialogue, a project cultivated by several hands, where history, material and production techniques come together, whether it is a product with a more industrial or craft character.

The collaboration with De Castelli reflects this synergy, a partnership attentive to both crafted and design values, capable of pushing research into the material to its productive limits.

Metal has a prominent place in your design experiments. You combine industrial manufacturing processes with a vision and craft skills that lead to highly innovative results. Was it this specific interest in metals that brought you closer to TIPSTUDIO? Or was it their great craft skills? Or something else?

Between De Castelli and TIPSTUDIO there is undoubtedly a natural affinity. Both have a strong interest in and passion for exploring materials, in particular metals, with a sartorial approach, although we differ in the different techniques of fabrication we use. At De Castelli we prefer thick sheet metal, while the TIPSTUDIO duo are heirs to skills bound up with metal casting. The same concept of heritage is a founding characteristic of our company, the heir to four generations of masters in metalworking, as well as TIPSTUDIO, which boasts the backing of one of the most important forges of Pietrasanta. Moreover, both see craftsmanship through a creative and contemporary gaze with the aim of creating new viewpoints and ideas, in which technique and aesthetics interact synergically and each strengthen the other.

Briefly, how did the two projects of Monolìte and Sinestesia come about? Where did you start and how did you meet at the design level?

Monolìte and Sinestesia are two of the innovations presented at the Salone del Mobile 2023, the result of the intense dialogue between De Castelli and TIPSTUDIO. The proposal that reached us through Imma and Tommaso embodies the suggestions of the Biomorphic research that we presented last year, investigating in a contemporary key the work techniques of sheet-metal beaters from the late 19th century. TIPSTUDIO enthusiastically accepted the project brief by presenting not one, but two products fully expressing the sculptural value and technical approach we requested.

Are there other paths you’d like to explore with Imma Matera and Tommaso Lucarini?

We believe that continuing to entwine our research with the work of Imma and Tommaso could be extremely fruitful, as it would enable both to embrace different viewpoints while maintaining their respective values and principles. From our point of view, exploring the world of metal casting - varying and reinterpreting it in the processing of thick sheet metal - could lead to unexplored regions resulting from connections that appear to be in contrast but actually have close affinities.