DesignMarketo brought the “Bar Alto collection” to Milan for the Salone – where it took up residence at the Salone designers’ favourite hangout – Bar Basso, the venue it was inspired by.

During the Salone, in the dead of night, the design community pours into Bar Basso.

Maurizio Stocchetto the owner of Bar Basso, who besides inventing the best cocktail in Milan and keeping over the years one of the most pleasant places to go for a drink,  is a person with whom you can passionately speak about everything: movies, art, magic, life …He is an expert of design, or better said – he is an expert of people making design, he knows all of them and he is friend of most of them

The DesignMarketo exhibition includes commissions by a host of designers ( Maria Jeglinska, Loris & Livia, Use Dev Org, Tomas Alonso, Nitzan Cohen, Lars Frideen, Max Frommeld, Chiara Onida and Michael Marriott ), who were asked to let their creativity loose on the classic Duralex Picardie drinking glass.

Narcissus
designed by Lars Frideen

I always liked the backs of old looking-glass mirrors, and since they are never seen, facing the wall or covered, I wanted to celebrate these surfaces and bring them out. The result is the reflective side now facing inwards and the back is the outside, almost like if you had taken an old mirror and crumbled it in to the shape of a glass.

The beautiful back-side now in front also reflect any surface it sits on a bit like a chameleon.

This is what happens if You…
designed by Chiara Onida and AUT

1 Spend a few hours selecting the very special bits of the waste from a furnace in Murano… arrange a Skype meeting to draw a line with a marker… put Simona M. on a boat going to a furnace in Murano… and glue the outcomes onto a glass with very special glue.

2 Jump on a boat, go to the furnace… put a glass in a very special oven and leave it there for a day… collect everything the day after, hoping nothing went too wrong.

3 Put on your kaleidoscope eyes.

Chiara is a product designer based in London.
AUT is based in Italy and works in communication and product design.
Since 2009 they sometimes work together.

Alcohol in Disguise
designed by Max Frommeld

The Duralex Picardie glass is one of the most known objects in the world. It is very well designed and made of an incredibly sophisticated material as well as manufacturing technique. Its outstanding beauty and physical form has not been changed since 1927. Hence, I refused to manipulate the glass.

Instead I tried to add a secondary element which was inspired by an observation walking through town. Brown paper bags around alcoholic drinks!

Happy drinking!

DIP
designed by Peter Marigold

Duralex tumblers dipped in colours.

Picnic Glass
designed by Jasleen Kaur

Duralex Picnic Glasses, for clumsy Indians.
designed by Jasleen Kaur

My great granddad moved to Britain in 1950. He made a living from pushing a homemade cart from door to door selling goods or spotting construction sites from afar and turning up to see if there was any jobs going. He dressed like a real gentleman, like one of those proud to be British types, with a well kept moustache and tweed hat (a modern replacement for his once traditional turban). He was an in-betweener,

a hybrid of both Indian and British and in his undecided state, functioned beautifully in his new surroundings.

The things I observe and make are how I see my great granddad and myself. Although constructed from many things, they just work.

Washed Away…
designed by Nitzan Cohen

Resembling old glass pieces washed away by the sea shore — opaque, rounded and carrying fragments of stories… This series of standard Duralex Picardie glasses were washed away by sand, wearing a new and softer skin — less defined, more precious and somewhat mysterious…

Washed Away, a series of ten iconic (washed away) glasses.

Tipsy
designed by Loris&Livia

They look a bit out of shape, a bit wrong, just like the world around you when you get tipsy! Reminders of the merry atmosphere in over-crowded bars, standing like happy cocktail lovers defying the laws of gravity, Loris&Livia’s glasses were put in a kiln at a very high temperature until reaching their melting point. The process resulted in a slow deformation of the pieces while preserving their original identity.