Italian furniture company Potocco has been quietly creating well-crafted domestic and outdoor furniture designs since the early 1900s. In recent years, the family-run company has opened up to the design community through collaborations with the likes of David Lopez Quincoces, Toan Nguyen, and Bernhardt & Vella, who each interpreted its artisanal savoir faire with a well-defined aesthetic language. Among its most recent collaborators is designer Chiara Andreatti, who has now been appointed as the company’s art director, with the aim of combining Potocco’s legacy with a new poetic and contemporary approach.
Andreatti is a perfect fit for Potocco: her work is mindful of craftsmanship techniques, which are often incorporated into her designs, and her aesthetic sensibility is exquisitely contemporary with just a touch of stylistic nostalgia.
Potocco's latest outdoor furniture collection
A pair of ‘Keel’ stools, by M+V, for Potocco
As Potocco launches a new collection of outdoor furniture, Andreatti was entrusted to create some striking imagery to present it, marking the Italian designer’s debut at the helm of the company’s collections and image. The immersive photography that introduces the collections is shot at Villa Domus, a 1938 rationalist villa on the Ligurian coast. In this project, the company explains, the domestic space is intended as a theatre for the furniture, which interacts with the architecture and nature.
‘I wanted to recreate very natural and intimate situations, where the spontaneity of everyday life could be perceived,’ says Andreatti, who worked closely with photographer Francesca Ferrari on the photographic series. ‘In this case, it’s the light itself that gives character to the products and designs the spaces.’
New additions to the Potocco outdoor furniture collections include the ‘Tibes’ family of seats by Gregorio Facco
Under Andreatti’s direction, the new outdoor furniture collections, including the ‘Tibes’ seats by Gregorio Facco, are shown alongside the house's minimalist architecture, but also on the nearby cliffs and immersed in greenery. A series defined by lightness, ‘Tibes’ comprises a chair, a stool and an armchair composed of a powder-coated metal structure and fine hand-woven rope seat.
‘The historicity of a Friulian company founded in the early 1900s carries an important weight in my role,’ says Andreatti, explaining her proposed direction for Potocco. ‘The quality of the product remains unchanged; there is only a material, textile and chromatic restyling in place and a definitely new way of making their furnishings dialogue together.’ For this shoot, she adds, ‘I deliberately chose a location with a strong modernist character to create a strong contrast with their richly designed pieces’.
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