Vol. 2

Architects and Objects

Postwar Italian silver

text by Christian House

For Cleto Munari, the Gorizia-born designer, manufacturer, and collector, Italy has always been a mecca for materials. Everything is a potential medium, every object a potential artwork—or perhaps every artwork is an object. In a career that has spanned half a century—and found him in the circles of Ettore Sottsass, Carlo Scarpa, and Andy Warhol—Munari has commissioned and produced esoteric collections of jewellery, furniture, textiles, glass, ceramics, and, perhaps most significantly, silverware.

“It is very difficult to place Cleto Munari in the traditional categories”, noted Giuseppe Mazzariol, long-time director of the Fondazione Querini Stampalia. “If he had lived in the eighteenth century, with no doubt he would have asked Tiepolo to make some frescoes.” He would most likely have also requested a teapot from Vanvitelli…