Taking New Zealand furniture to Italy

Phil Cuttance's Gulp children's chairs

Milan, one of the world's style capitals, plays host to top international furniture designers this week, including some of New Zealand's hottest talent.

The group taking New Zealand furniture to the Salone Internazionale del Mobile Fair includes award-winning Havelock North designer David Trubridge, who is showing off-site. He is building on his success from previous appearances at the show, while Wellington's Georgio Saltos is attending for the first time, along with a group of design students and graduates from Massey University's Albany campus.

As the world's design media descend on Milan hoping to get the scoop on the next big thing, the Kiwi contingent will be building on this country's reputation for innovative and original work.

Saltos has been given a top spot at the Salone Satellite Show, the fair's avant-garde section, where international press report on emerging talent and manufacturers choose designs suitable for production. Saltos has been allocated an exhibition space in a prime position at the front and his work will be seen by more than 200,000 people from trade and the media.

"The opportunity to push New Zealand design to the international forefront at this level and exposure is simply unbelievable," says Saltos, a graduate of Victoria University's design school.

The Massey students will also be featured in the satellite show, the first time a New Zealand university has exhibited.

Trubridge is exhibiting an installation called Volute, a design featuring his signature style - repetitive forms made from pieces of thin plywood shaped by a computer-guided cutter.

He has transported all the pieces of the sea-shell-like structure, called a volute, to Milan in a suitcase. Volute is on show at the Zona Tortona, a focal area of creative activity in the centre of Milan during the fair. It will be featured in the space used by the German company Art Aqua, which is manufacturing some of his designs in Europe.

Recent Massey University design graduate Phil Cuttance wanted to take something to Milan that would stand out.

"I was watching the news one night and I saw this python swallowing a crocodile, which made me wonder what a python swallowing furniture would look like. It's quite a bizarre thought but I'm quite fond of furniture and I think about it all the time.

"And why can't furniture be funny?"

The Massey students, led by senior lecturer Nick Dearden, are Charlie Moran, Becs Bartells, Ben Thomsen, Ollie McDermott, Phil D'Anvers and Stephen Smith.

"Trubridge's success at previous Salone satellite shows has helped to put New Zealand on the international furniture design map," says Cuttance.

"We hope to benefit from this international interest in New Zealand design and further lift the profile of Kiwi designers."