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Shell Coffee Table

Danny Lane

from € 3.690,00 VAT excl.

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FIAM designs, develops and produces items of furniture in curved glass, creating them through a combination of craftsmanship and industrial processes, actually merging tradition and innovation, hand-crafting and design.

Hand-in-hand with its innovation in design, the founder of FIAM, Vittorio Livi, has always invested heavily in innovation in technology. Industrially produced glass reaches FIAM in the form of sheets. After the initial cutting, grinding and milling stages, the sheet is ready for bending, a process which starts with preheating to 630 °C. It is fundamental for the glass’s temperature to be absolutely uniform during this stage, because even tiny differences cause the sheet to break. At less than 600 °C, the vitreous mass crystallises and can no longer be moulded, while at a higher temperature it may become too free-flowing. To deal with these problems, over the years and as technology evolved, the small natural gas-fired bending furnace used to process the glass was replaced with another, larger, oil-fired one, and then by another powered by electricity, to guarantee better control of temperatures and the transformation of the heat from static to dynamic. Instead of refractory bricks, nowadays insulation is provided by high-tech ceramic insulating tiles of the kind also used on the space shuttles. Originally made from clay, the die is now produced in thermal steel.

FIAM has now reached its fifth generation of glass bending plants: the master glass craftsman is now assisted by ground-breaking technologies in terms of both instruments and materials, enabling the company to rise to the increasingly challenging demands of the designers who wish to work with this peerless material.

A sculptor of American origin, Danny Lane moved to England in 1975 to study with Patrick Reyntiens, an artist specialized in the use of coloured glass. A disciple of the visionary artist Cecil Collins, he studied Fine Arts at the Byam Shaw School of Art and the Central School of Art and Design. At college he experimented with and developed his own concept of design, which continued to be the main feature of his creative process.

Travelling in Europe, he confirmed his early interest in the comparisons of the relationship between art and architecture. In 1981 he set up his first studio in London and began to develop applied art objects using low-cost industrial glass. In the mid-Eighties, his understanding of context, the direct use of materials and the combination in his furnishing designs of contradictory materials and shapes made him a key figure on the international design scene.

Together with limited series works for home furnishing, he received numerous commissions for sculpture and architectural projects in both iron and glass. In 1989 he moved to his current studio in Hythe Road to allow better organisation of his contemporary volume of work.

FIAM, founded by Vittorio Livi in 1973, designs, develops and produces items of furniture in curved glass, creating them through a combination of craftsmanship and industrial processes, effectively merging tradition and innovation, hand-crafting and design.

Vittorio Livi came to know and appreciate glass from a very young age. Solid and fragile, natural and artificial, ancient and industrial all at the same time, glass is a mass of seeming contradictions, and Livi loved it for just that, as well as for its practical qualities. Glass is environmentally friendly and hygienic: it may look simple, because of its transparency, but both its chemistry and physics are in fact very complex. And this material of vast potential was virtually only used for the production of small accessories or ornaments in the world of furniture.

And so in the young Vittorio Livi’s creative mind, a dream began to take shape: glass would become a unique star in the world of fine design, being used to produce items of furniture which would be astonishingly solid yet beautifully transparent; design items which would rise above the age of their production, untouched by the passing years, spaces and fashions.

Coffee table

Base in 2mm-thick curved glass, 15mm-thick handsculptured glass top, hardware in stainless steel

SPECIFICATIONS

Width 125cm, depth 125cm, height 40cm
94kg
Total load capacity: 150kg
Note: this product is HEAVY and FRAGILE, please make adequate arrangements for the reception, or use our professional "white glove" delivery service

Made in Italy

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