Salone exclusive: Enzo Mari’s ‘Boomerang’ desk flies back into production

Gebrüder Thonet Vienna (GTV), the Viennese and Turin-based furniture manufacturer, is reissuing Enzo Mari’s ‘Boomerang’ desk for Salone del Mobile 2025, and you don’t need to be a furniture historian to be delighted by its return. The desk, which Mari originally designed for GTV in 2001, is a friendly, winking piece of furniture for the office or home – or home office. Mari may have been one of the more outspoken renegades of the Italian Maestri, but his legacy of nearly 2000 works over 60 active years, is united by an enduring endearment.

The ‘Boomerang’ is self-evident: a curved glass surface rests on a boomerang-shaped beechwood plank, supported by four rounded legs. There is a child-like charm to the design but, like so much of Mari’s work, the desk’s simplicity belies its cleverness and warmth. By warmth, we mean specifically here the embrace of the curve, which holds its worker gently. This is not the power desk of a 1960s ad man or a 1980s yuppy. It has a democratic quality – a transparent surface – and the effect is to make its occupant approachable, perfect for receiving guests with the gentlest hint of authority, but not intimidating them. The clever people at GTV will likely have felt that it makes the perfect desk for a home office, which of course we are all seeking these days.

‘Play is not meant to pass the time, but to understand the world,’ Mari wrote. True to his words, he used a light touch to make serious statements about the ills of the design industry – its greed and consumerist gumption. One of Mari’s most celebrated projects was his ‘Autoprogettazione?’ tract from 1974 – a manual with instructions for building one’s own simple furniture from readily accessible materials. Mari sent the manual for free to anyone who wrote to him. The premise and promise of open source design lives on.

Gebruederthonetvienna.com