An archival Schläppi 1968 hand, standing at 4.7 meters tall, has been the showpiece in the gardens at the Bonaveri factory since 2007. This object has been adjusted and scaled and is now the Icon of Bonaveri Décor. Painted in Bonaveri Red, an historic colour in Ferrara, the hometown of the Bonaveri family.
This object is also available in a smaller size: 25 x 7 x 4.5 cm
During a project with The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which involved the work of Constantin Brâncuși, The Sleeping Muse became the inspiration for this object. During our research we discovered the original sculpture in 1910 was carved from white marble and Baroness Renée-Irana Frachon was the original muse. ‘The Baroness’ was conceived from one of the project’s unseen clay prototypes. In homage to Brâncuși, we produced this object in Portoro Marble with an inserted polished bronze abstract face.
Born in 1935, Italian artist Lorenzo Piemonti spent a decade of his career in Switzerland, from 1965 to 1975 as a sculptor for Schläppi, creating mannequins and surrealist objects. The sculpture ‘Protection’ was discovered in an archival book of Piemonti’s work. We adored the image so much, we have carefully recreated it in honour of the incredible work Piemonti created for Schläppi.
The sculpting atelier creates miniature figurines or ‘maquettes’ to understand the pose, anatomy and proportions of the body before a mannequin is sculpted. They can often be found huddled together on shelves and tables, waiting to be shown to the client. We named this piece ‘The Wait’ as its pose and unfinished quality seems fitting to the process.
We pay homage to British artist Barbara Hepworth. Inspired by ‘The Cosdon Head’ sculpted in 1949 from blue marble, we immediately pulled the original Schläppi 2500 heads from the archives. The similarities were striking, it felt as though Hepworth’s work had inspired the Schläppi sculptor during that period of design. We recreated the archive Schläppi head in our sculpting atelier and added the signature Hepworth hollowed eye and followed the shape and scale of Hepworth’s original sculpture.
This object is also available in a smaller size: 25 x 19 x 26cm