Here is the latest creation from DesignTaleStudio: TDA5, the third Tagli d’Autore collection, the new ceramic slabs with a 30_120 cm size destined to the Living, public and residential spaces. The texture of this collection is, we can say, the most traditional one: a texture of lilies (black on a white backdrop and white on a black backdrop) and decorative locks.

A revival, re-interpreted with creativity and innovation, of one of the most famous historic symbols in Italy and Europe. The lily, in fact, is present in the Holy Bible, in Kingdom of France and in the emblem of Florence and it has always been a symbol of nobility and royalty.

The decorative lily which, in reality, is an iris, takes its name from the goddess Iris, the messenger of the gods, who was transformed into a rainbow by Juno. And this is also the main feature of the series TDA5 Tagli d’Autore: a refined and elegant ceramic slab that ennobles and enriches with emotion and luminosity any kind of residential or public space in which it is placed to complement a porcelain stoneware cladding.

An ideal rainbow recreated in our living spaces.

The second Tagli d’Autore collection, large sized porcelain stoneware slabs created by DesignTaleStudio for the dressing of Living and public spaces, is called TDA2N and TDA3A.
The texture that comprises this series is made up of an interweave of stripes, “tongues”, horizontal and vertical rips that interlock one another.

The stripes in relief are in different colours and tones: black and bronze glazes (TDA2N) and red, orange and black glazes (TDA3A). At first sight, the surface seems deliberately torn, revealing an imaginary backdrop.

This Tagli d’Autore series, less minimal than the previous series, relinquishes the geometry of the lines is akin to a delicate, orderly chaos: let’s think about these ceramic slabs in a public or residential space, in a bright Living; they will surely provide volume and enthusiasm and warmth to the atmosphere.

But, what is the creative potential of the series? Imagination, don’t you think? If you look carefully at the slabs, at times you will notice they seem to resemble interweaved branches or waves in a strange coloured sea!

Tagli d’Autore, DesignTaleStudio’s new ceramic slab series is based on three minimal and decorative drawings, today we are going to introduce you to the first one.

As you can see from the photograph, the first Tagli d’Autore texture is the TDA1 collection and it is a series of parallel lines in relief carried out with grits and gold and platinum glazes. The three-dimensional lines create a special light and shadow effect, provoking bronze hints on the surface of the slab which enhance the product, making it brilliant and lively.

It is Tagli d’Autore’s most dynamic and minimal series and if used as a complement on public or residential wall coverings, which are usually mono-chromatic, makes these surfaces more dynamic, tactile and the whole space acquires a different volume. In other words, an incredible space revolution thanks to a simple and basic trait.

Kandinsky used to say that a point is the absolute calm while a line, which comes out from the quick shift of the point, is the movement. What better comparison?

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We would like to close the series of videos taken during The Grand Design Tour event with the presentation, by Laura Villani, of Sandra Bermudez slab, displayed at the Otto Gallery in Bologna. A work with a strong graphic element which uses crunched paper as a metaphor of the feminine work.

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In this video, Laura Villani, “director” of the Grand Design Tour event and Paolo Cesana, Refin’s marketing manager, present DesignTaleStudio ceramic slabs created by Karim Rashid. Works which perfectly fit the aesthetic tradition of the Egyptian designer and which can be used to clad and decorate both interiors and exteriors. The video was filmed at the art gallery “L’Ariete Artecontemporanea” in Bologna during the inaugural event of the Grand Design Tour.

With this post, Federica, a young writer from Parma with a strong passion for ceramic and design, starts her collaboration with DesignTaleStudio. Welcome!

Following the preview of the new Tagli d’Autore collection, presented by DesignTaleStudio during this year’s Cersaie, we can finally go into greater detail on all the innovative types of porcelain stoneware composing the brand-new lines of products.

Tagli d’Autore is a collection of large size porcelain stoneware slabs (30×120) of tremendous value and elegance: hand-made ceramics of top quality materials which have been studied and researched with methods recalling the rhythms of traditional Italian craftsmanship laboratories.

Thanks to the creative and elaboration capacity of our traditional and professional skills, DesignTaleStudio offers unique products with a strong, dynamic character with a high artistic content, created to enhance the Living design of public and residential modern spaces.

In the next days, we will examine, in greater detail, every drawing that makes up the collection analyzing their aesthetic and cultural hints. Meanwhile, let’s have a look at some photos: brilliant design, glittering wall coverings for a new way of living.

We are taking the occasion of the Blog Action Day, this year focusing on ecology issues, to start introducing a very important topic for DesignTaleStudio and for contemporary architecture in general: the theme of bio-building and of the adoption of eco-friendly materials as the cornerstones for design spaces.

As we well know, the environmental issue is (or should be) the focus of the world political agenda: just thinking back to the recent Nobel Peace Prize given to Al Gore and his campaign on the global warming and climatic shocks. In the ceramic industry, the “hottest” themes from an environmental point of view are energy consumptions, pollution and the extraction of raw materials. In recent years, all of the most important companies in the sector, and Refin was amongst the first ones, have obtained the important Ecolabel certification as “a guarantee of the steps taken forward towards raw materials selection, higher efficiency in the use of energy and water resources, considerable reduction of polluting releases as well as in the great increasing of material re-cycling processes”.

In this context, DesignTaleStudio wants to be the standard bearer of a new productive philosophy that, by reviving the craftsmanship values and the small scale production, tries to bring into question the immutable productive logic of the industry. In the same way as the concept of “Slow Food”, based on a culture consisting of quality, creativity and freshness opposed to the “barbarism” of fast/junk food, which, in recent years, has become key to the restaurant sector, we would like to become the spokesperson of a slow approach to design, conceived as research, experimentation and uniqueness. A basic approach for today’s market which has been invaded by Asian products of doubtful quality .

Ours is the relaxed pace of those who don’t need to hurry. “Rediscover the right measure, re-conquest the expert calmness of craftsmen. Substitute the noise of machines with the silence of paint brushes for a new concept of art, creativity, experimentation”: this is what our new Cersaie catalogue states and we believe these are the values to revive for a really sustainable, eco-friendly design.

This morning saw the opening of Cersaie 2007, the most important international trade-fair for ceramics and sanitary-ware. As we revealed in our previous posts, on the occasion of Cersaie, DesignTaleStudio launches a brand-new series of products targeting residential and public design spaces.

The wait is therefore over. We can finally take the veil off the Tagli d’Autore, 30×120 cm ceramic slabs with a refined and welcoming style, the perfect choice to enliven modern and minimalist porcelain stoneware claddings. There are three basic design themes that make up the collection textures:

• a series of three-dimensional bright lines in the colour of gold and platinum for the TDA1, that you can also see in the above photo of the stand;
• a free criss-cross of colour “flashes” all in different colours for the TDA2 and the TDA3
• a lily pattern with a hint of both modern and traditional, black on white (TDA4) and white on black (TDA5). And it is the lily that has inspired the new graphic theme of the blog that debuted this morning.

We will go into greater depth and discover the Tagli d’Autore in the next few days. In the meantime, come and visit our stand (Pav. 36, Stand C42 – watch some photos here), perhaps on Wednesday, October 3, so together we can go into the heart of Bologna for the inauguration of the Grand Design Tour.

At the very beginning, the flooring of the Monslab Gallery Porto Venere, the art gallery hosting DesignTaleStudio’s “Meta Design” exhibition was made of porphyry, as is the rest of the Portobello area in Porto Venere. Then, during the setting up of the exhibition, we asked ourselves: why don’t we install large size porcelain stoneware slabs, as we usually do in our real life projects?

Making these decisions on Second Life is, of course, a very easy job, as there are no benches to be moved. The technical features of porcelain stoneware (strength, acid and frost resistance, low absorption levels, cleanability…) clearly lose their value in a virtual space and the only value criterion is that of aesthetic pleasure. So, how can the slabs “stand out” in a visually convincing way and faithfully reproduce the original? After having carried out some trials with some modern style collections of our parent company, Refin, the very tiles that we usually combine with DesignTaleStudio slabs, we have opted for the Velvet Ground Grafite. They are large size slabs, opaque and dark, which exalt the luminosity of the displayed works and create a kind of discontinuous effect with the outdoor space, in such a way to visually mark the entrance of the gallery, as it does not have a door.

From a technical point of view, the first solution we tried was that of repeating the image of a single slab imported as a texture, but then we realized that the Second Life rendering engine is not able to faithfully reproduce the colour-shading. After many attempts, we decided to create a single texture image on every backdrop, in which the installation pattern had been emulated using Photoshop and drawing very small grout-lines within a large image of a single “miniature” of the slab. By loading the image at the highest definition possible on the Second Life editor, we managed to obtain a flooring effect we were happy with. In this way, we also managed to save on the number of prims, which meant that we could afford to buy more cocktail glasses…

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This short video is just a preview of a documentary film on DesignTaleStudio we are currently working on, a trip through the techniques and creativity of our ceramic art masters. Watching, yet again, the creation of a Parete Gold in the video has been a very emotional experience we immediately felt the need to share with you: never mind if the images on this clip are still “raw and crude”.

The filming has been carried out in our laboratory in Salvaterra and it shows our team at work with gold, clay and other powders to transform a porcelain stoneware slab in a real work of art: unique, irreproducible and authentic, in the wake of the great Italian ceramic tradition.