La Magie du Bois
IX COLLECTION
The collection IX “La Magie du Bois” marks an important milestone in the journey of the well-known Milanese brand.
MARTASALA ÉDITIONS celebrates 10 years with an exhibition at the Bagatti Valsecchi museum during Salone del Mobile week and introduces a prestigious collaboration with Swiss studio Herzog & de Meuron. Everything is always in the name of continuity, dialogue and passion for what is well crafted.
(Ph: Giulio Ghirardi)
The collaboration began in 2024, during the Swiss studio’s renovation of the famous Hotel Les Trois Rois in Basel.
“The Meninas were originally conceived as part of The Council, the first renovated interior by Herzog & de Meuron for the hotel. An intimate room featuring two fireplaces facing one another, composed of unusual and contrasting surfaces that invite touch.
The family of pentagonal upholstered chairs was created to accompany the Velazquez table, with the same pentagonal shape.
Particularly in the design of the chair, the concept of non-directional directionality inherent in a pentagonal form allows for multiple ways to sit on it or to orient yourself. The minimal backrest provides sufficient support for the back or serves as an armrest, without consuming the limited space available.
Marta immediately recognized the connotation to the Meninas in the famous Velazquez painting. We like it when objects transcend their functionality to assume distinct personalities, they inhabit the space with a different presence.”
Now there are available in three diffents sizes and completed with a useful ottoman.
(Ph: Giulio Ghirardi)
The collection IX “La Magie du Bois” marks an important milestone in the journey of the well-known Milanese brand.
MARTASALA ÉDITIONS celebrates 10 years with an exhibition at the Bagatti Valsecchi museum during Salone del Mobile week and introduces a prestigious collaboration with Swiss studio Herzog & de Meuron.
Everything is always in the name of continuity, dialogue and passion for what is well crafted.
The collaboration began in 2024, during the Swiss studio’s renovation of the famous Hotel Les Trois Rois in Basel.
“The Meninas were originally conceived as part of The Council, the first renovated interior by Herzog & de Meuron for the hotel. An intimate room featuring two fireplaces facing one another, composed of unusual and contrasting surfaces that invite touch.
The family of pentagonal upholstered chairs was created to accompany the Velazquez table, with the same pentagonal shape.
Particularly in the design of the chair, the concept of non-directional directionality inherent in a pentagonal form allows for multiple ways to sit on it or to orient yourself. The minimal backrest provides sufficient support for the back or serves as an armrest, without consuming the limited space available.
Marta immediately recognized the connotation to the Meninas in the famous Velazquez painting. We like it when objects transcend their functionality to assume distinct personalities, they inhabit the space with a different presence.”
Now there are available in three diffents sizes and completed with a useful ottoman.
(Ph: Giulio Ghirardi)
This introduces the theme of wood to the company, especially canaletto walnut, renewing the founding principles of MARTASALA ÉDITIONS: from studying dimensions to modularity, while never forgetting an obsessive attention to detail and continuous experimentation.
(Ph: Giulio Ghirardi)
The Velazquez table showcases what is possible to create with wood, it is a masterpiece in craftsmanship, like the room it was designed for, The Council cigar lounge in the Hotel Les Trois Rois in Basel. An intimate room featuring two magnificent fireplaces facing one another.
The Velazquez emerged from the necessity to have two different table heights for the cigar lounge. The question was: how can you make a table adjustable without a complicated mechanism? The idea was simple, by cutting the base of the table in half in a zigzag pattern, it would increase in height when reassembled "wrongly" and slightly rotated. With this rotation, the spikes would no longer sit neatly in their original slots but instead sit on top of the shorter cutouts.
To accomplish the precision needed for this puzzle to work, a digitally controlled milling process in combination with meticulous manual sanding was required, more than 40 hours. The height adjustability became the form-giving principle. The fact that the base and top are two interlocking crowns is a nice coincidence, since the table was designed for Les Trois Rois.
Armory family
In 2006, Herzog & de Meuron began working on the transformation of Park Avenue Armory in New York. It was here in the attics and basements of this important historic structure that we stumbled upon a collection of robust, basic, dark wood furnishing. This was the source of inspiration for a new family of utility furniture to suite the needs and heavy usage of the building’s active program – dinners, parties, meetings, performances.
The Armory family embraces the simplicity of straight square pieces of wood assembled with traditional wood joining techniques, resulting in sturdy furniture pieces that represent the physical presence and scale of the interiors of the Park Avenue Armory.
Armory Table:
The starting point was a series of tables constructed with the strict principle of using only one wood profile. The design is simple, robust, and practical since it can be flat-packed thanks to its interlocking construction.
(Ph: Giulio Ghirardi)
The Armory chair follows the same logic — a specific function defining a specific section — here bent into a simple curve to provide comfort for the body. By splitting the seat in half, the chairs become stackable, which makes them more versatile.
The Armory family is part now of MARTASALA ÉDITIONS collection.
(Ph: Giulio Ghirardi)
Shaun armchair and pouf
Originally conceived for a café in Japan, the Shaun chair has been in development for over a decade. It has evolved through many cycles of re-invention. Born for an architectural project, it does not follow any trend or style. It is an architectural element within an interior space with its own strong character and identity.
The original idea was to reduce a soft chair to its minimum – two pillows, one as a seat and the other as a back. They are attached to each other invisibly, almost magically balancing on each other, supported simply by four legs. The legs stick straight into the underside of the seat pad almost like a table construction, spread wide at the front to give more legroom, and tighter at the back in a kind of compositional counterbalance. The hoof-like feet reinterpret the milled geometry of the quarter-turned legs used in some of our other furniture concepts, and together with the soft upholstered volume (the can be used as a stool, table, or footrest thanks to its limited dimensions and light weight. first prototypes in fluffy wool) imbue the chair with animalistic charm. Shaun was born.
In the final version, the seat and backrest are carefully upholstered like two velvet macaroons with luxurious fabrics. The scale and proportions are generous and, in combination with the oiled Canaletto walnut, elevate the chair with a certain elegance and noblesse.
Complete with its own small, playful pouf, released from the Herzog & de Meuron archive to enrich the Marta Sala Éditions collection, the dining chair becomes a lounge chair. Yet the pouf on its own is an extremely useful and versatile piece and hand crafted in Italy.
(Ph: Giulio Ghirardi)
To complete the collection, as result of “The Secret Soul of Useful Things” exhibition at the milanse museum, the Pier Fausto armchair designed for the occasion by Lazzarini Pickering: a revised Savonarola chair dedicated to the older of the two Bagatti Valsecchi brothers.
Its future sale will, in part, support the cultural and conservation activities of the Museum. This piece underlines the unbroken collaboration between MARTASALA ÉDITIONS and the roman based studio.
(Ph: Giulio Ghirardi)