Designer Desire: Gino Colombini

Montage of Gino Colombini designs

It was only last week when we bought a vintage bright orange plastic waste paper basket that we learned anything about Gino Colombini.

Gino Colombini (1915-2011) was an Italian product designer who worked primarily in plastic. From 1933 to 1952, he worked in the Milan practice of the architect and designer, Franco Albini. Together, they co-designed the rattan ‘Margherita’ chair in 1951. From 1953 until 1960, Colombini was the first technical director of Kartell for whom he created many domestic products including the waste paper basket that we bought.

His designs are featured in the book Kartell: The Culture of Plastics published by Taschen in 2013.

Colombini won the Compasso d’Oro award on five occasions; 1955, 1957, 1958, 1959 and 1960. The Museum of Modern Art in New York have a number of his designs in their permanent collection.

Our orange bin will shortly be for sale in our space at Valley Antiques in Hebden Bridge. However, if you can’t get over to West Yorkshire, you can often find examples of his products on 1stDibs, Bukowskis and Etsy.

Portrait of Gino Colombinicredit

Additional image credits:
Bukowskis | Pinterest

Palaset Treston storage boxes

Vintage Papaset Treston storage boxes | H is for Home

We picked up these fabulous red & white office drawers last week. They’re from the Palaset range designed by Ristomatti Ratia for Treston of Finland in the early 1970s.

Vintage Papaset Treston storage boxes | H is for Home

They come in individual units which slot on top of one another allowing you to customize your own larger system as required. They’re also available in brown, yellow and green colourways. For vinyl junkies out there, the open cubes are the perfect size to accommodate LPs. The modular range was very popular at the time, selling worldwide, but it’s increasingly hard to find these days. We think that there was a later re-launch, but the manufacturer used an inferior plastic and production didn’t last very long.

Vintage Papaset Treston storage boxes | H is for Home

Look out for the early examples. They have real solid weight to them – people often think they’re made of wood when first handled.

Lable on the bottom of a vintage Papaset Treston storage box | H is for Home

In addition to designing office products, Ristomatti Ratia worked on a variety of homewares – fashion accessories too – including spectacles and a best selling shoulder bag. Incidentally, he’s the son of Armi Ratia, née Airaksinen, the founder of Marimekko.

Our Picturehouse Antiques shop space | H is for Home

We’ve put the drawers into shop space number 2. The look of this space changes quite often, but it tends to mix mid century modern design with much older country antiques. It’s certainly quite eclectic at the moment!

Our Picturehouse Antiques shop space | H is for Home

These two stacking units are priced at £195 (ish!) for the pair – ‘collection only’ for these. Drop us a line if you’re interested and would like us to reserve them for you… or, if there’s anything else in the pictures that takes your fancy, we can advise on prices, shipping options if applicable etc.

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