Maddalena Selvini is a designer based in Milan working at the intersection of product, set and interior design. With a practice driven by material speculation she creates objects, spaces and experiences where material research and unimagined narratives merge. Combining a studio-bound mode of production with ad hoc commissions she collaborates internationally with brands and privates within food, fashion and architecture industry. more
After studying contemporary jewellery, metalsmithing and product design in Milan she moved to The Netherlands where she graduated in 2014 from the department of Man and Well Being at the Design Academy Eindhoven (DAE). In the past years she has been working alternating her studio practice with periods of research in craft driven contexts such as Oaxaca, Mexico and the Alps in Italy. She currently teaches project methodology at Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti (NABA) in Milan. website by davidediteodoro.com
Press
Elle Design
Domus Viaggio in Italia
Elle Decor Futuro Green
Brigitte
Vogue Deutsch
Couch
Elle Decor
Wallpaper*
Domus
The Weekender
Elle Italia
Architectural Digest
Marie Claire
Elle Japan
Io Donna
Broken White
Paesaggi Domestici
Design e Delitto
Design Boom
Elle a Tavola
Exhibitions
FATTO BENE
ITALY: A New Domestic Landscape
Feel Felt
Emerging lines
Open House Milano
Santa pop-up
Alive and curious
Uovo&Pietra
Avant-Cènes
The italian in Paris
DAE Salone 2016
Talente
At Luisa Cevese
Operæ 2015
Souvenir di Milano
Women in Italian Design
Reciprocity
Capitalism is Over
Un Design per le Imprese
Artificio
Mint Spring 2015
1063°
Sense Non Sense
Operæ 2017
S.Pot — In winter, warming up our hands with a cup of tea is a comfort to our minds, but nowadays it’s normal to set the heating on 22°, thus wasting money, energy, and worst of all, forgetting that it’s actually cold outside. By doing so we end up being completely detached from our surroundings and ourselves. Back in the past people gathered around the chimney, with food always rumbling on top of the stove and a pan with burning charcoal put in their beds before going to sleep.
A set of pots that function like a stove. The set comes with three lids in different shapes, allowing the user to decide what to warm up on top of the pot while the food inside is cooking. Spot is made from a serpentine soft stone, called “Pietra Ollare”. This material can be found in Valtellina, Italy, where each piece is handmade according to an old craft that is slowly being forgotten. This naturally lubricated stone (from the talco) is excellent to cook with, and furthermore has a pleasant touch and keeps its warmth for long periods of time.
Because of the properties of this stone the sand residue left over by the lathe was used to create a new kind of stoneware and glaze. By using different percentages of stone mixed with porcelain, a range of colours and textures came to live. Therefore nothing gets wasted and bowls, cups, teapots and more become part of the S.Pot.
Arena — Rena is the most arid element on earth, detected by water and mixed with stone debris. In nature it is generated by the perpetual flow of rivers, waves and tides that consume the geological volumes they encounter, translating them into dust: exhausted sand that rests on shores and lives in deserts. There is a form of automatism and necessity in the way it comes to life, and the same inevitability dictated by nature can be found in the flow of natural materials shaped by man.
Any human activity that uses stone, produces waste and dust that, like in nature, falls and deposits itself in liminal areas, in the corners of the workshops where it has been generated. Still and silent, facing gravity and trying to take as less space as possible. As in nature sand through sedimentation becomes rock, in the same way the dust produced by the manufacturing of Ollare stone, exposed to high temperature, solidifies becoming the arena of fascinating natural phenomena.
Bata Kumbala — The name of a centuries-old technique that improves transparency and changes colours of precious stones if exposed under very high temperatures. In nature rare minerals originate through slow geological processes that are artificially recreated to purify second choice stones since most of the veins are radically depleted nowadays.
This project is a research that applies the same thermal treatment to the production leftovers of building stones and it is so that green serpentino marble turns pink, grey soapstone forms red, orange and golden spots, green spluga marble changes in brown colours and at last the porphyry saturates into a light pink. These waste pieces, both primary and heated, are assembled to become home furnishings or surfaces.
Chest_ The word chest is based on the greek word Kiste, box, a container once made from crafted wickers. When it comes to the body the chest is a hollow space enclosed by the ribs containing most of the respiratory system and the heart. The chest is the symbol of abundance and flourishment, the place that welcoms the fruits of natural cycles. The “chest collection” is born with the intent of celebrating, with a modern attitude, the most common and useful object of all. Each peace is lasercut out of flexible precomposed veneers, which only come from certified plantations and forests.
Feel Felt _ The art of making felt by rolling, beating, and pressing animal hair or flocks of wool into a compact mass of even consistency, is assuredly older then the art of spinning and weaving. It’s said to be the oldest man-made material: its story goes back 8.000 years. In Pompeii were discovered specialized workshop producing felt hats and felt gloves, in Iran were found saddles and tends from the legendary nomadic people of Scythians, in Mongolia it’s still ordinary to make carpets and blankets, in Egypt some excavations revealed clothing items and in China warriors equipped themselves with even shields and actual boats made out of felt.
Since felt is the matted fibers of sheep, it has all the virtues of wool -warm, waterproof, resilient, durable- but denser, more compact and much more versatile. It is thanks to these many properties that it’s always been used for different purposes, from transport to clothing to housing. It was the invention of a wool card in 1748 which, while bringing a decisive improvement in method, drove us away from its cultural knowhow and craftsmanship, but mostly, the ability of using the method of felting itself to give thredimensiotnality. Infact, nowadays felt is made in long rolls as any other weaved textile, and only after it’s cut and sewed together. This aspect together with the fact that it’s the oldest material used to make anything for anyone (humans and non), drove my imagination to the aim of using the felt-machines as if they were hands, and with the use of textile molds it was possible to create wanted voids ed use the method of felting instead of stitching.
The feel felt project was inspired by the plant Queen of the Mediterranean sea: poseidon, also called the sea-felt.
At all times, men have been intrigued by curious balls of fibers that are often found in large numbers on Mediterranean beaches: already in antiquity Galien and Aristotle made mention of it. They were called “sea balls”, then aegagropiles, by analogy with the hairballs found in the stomachs of cats, goats, cows and other animals that swallow hair while licking. Aegagropiles generally have an ovoid shape, often a little flattened, sometimes spherical; their diameter varies between 3 and 6 cm, but there are larger ones; an aegagropile the size of an ostrich was even harvested in Corsica.
OFFER is a ceramic set of serving* cutlery; All the tools in the collection were made with the process of extrusion, which consists in shaping the material by passing it through an empty section, which initially determines an elongated volume; then the functional part of the spoon or fork is modeled directly from the extruded material; the instrument is, therefore, shaped without the addition of other elements: it is pure, like the act of offering. The object, through this technique, maintains its own weight and natural balance, it is naturally a single body.
Offer was technically created by the magnificent Sofia Cesana, who, in addition to the use of her expert hands, contributed with her advice to the spontaneous creation of the cutlery.