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Italian Furniture by Designer Enzo Mari

Enzo Mari is a legendary furniture designer and avid collector of everyday objects. His work was infused by adversity to mass consumerism, fame, and material excess during the post-war in Italy.

He influenced generations of designers and collectors with his material theory-conscious principles, sustainable production & contribution to the Arte Programmata.

Disdainful of marketing and retail, his lifelong project was to transform the world by freeing us from passive consumerism, the ways design had become increasingly "merchandised".

Fighting for the symbolic significance of an object rather than its "banal" use, he immediately started a tirade against the design industry's approaches. Mari was angered by the lack of socially responsible design (SRD); he believed methods should have integrity and collective awareness.

Despite multiple celebrated Enzo Mari chairs, such as the Sof Sof for Driade and Delfina, he often questioned the reason behind why he should even bother producing another chair.

Designing sustainable concepts and his pursuit to question the meaning of form, he was questionably a man before his time; take a peek into Enzo Mari's design concepts and add a timeless story to your decor.

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About Enzo Mari FurnitureWorld-famous Italian furniture designer and contemporary artist Enzo Mari has been featured in some of the most famous galleries and museums, Triennale Milano and Museum of Modern Art; he democratized design and detested fame.

His critical perspective and radical political views became essential to his design practice.

Born in Novara, Italy, in 1932, he studied at the Accademia Delle Belle Arti in Milan. He developed a keen interest in literature, psychology, politics, and the realm of perception social aspects of design. His vision was to invent essential, functional, and ever changeable objects.

Mari said, "I am often asked - what is the ideal object I would have wanted to create - I always answer: the ball! You start to use it at the age of one, and you play with it up to ninety; over time, the ball allows you to follow different rules. it's never conditioning."

Part of his theoretical research was the link between mass-produced objects and handicrafts. He believed in sharing as a fundamental approach to shaping his designs.

During his career in 1974, he introduced his vision with his DIY Autoprogettazione, translated as self-design; the manual included 19 simple build-it-yourself furniture from tables to chairs and bookcases. Fueled by the DIY movement, the simple hammer, and nails book was later followed by Artek's do-it-yourself series, enabling everyone to approach modern production. Originally designed by Italian designer Enzo and incorporated into his Autoprogettaziione manual, is the famed Sedia 1 chair; appearing in Artek's self-assembly kit, it went into production with the Finnish furniture company.

The chair perfectly illustrated his design, integrity theories paired with collective awareness, a chair to create and achieve goals synchronously. Mari said, "design is only design if it communicates knowledge".

The Sedia Chair is now part of an affordable easy to assemble furniture collection. Mari's works have been auctioned several times; the record price for this artist's Struttura n. 727 was sold at one of the most important auction houses in Italy, Il Ponte Auction House, Via Pontaccio for USD 119,991 in 2014.

Discover the master of self-design, Enzo Mari furniture inspirations here, and add a little backstory character to your home.

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