Client / Colleoni Arte
Year / 2017
Penelope is a circular carpet. It is sewn, partly by machine and partly by hand, with a particular photoluminescent yarn.
It is designed for the Colleoni Arte gallery and produced in limited series into the laboratories neighbouring to the gallery that work scrupulously also as suppliers for activities in the area of Bergamo, producing padded, curtains, carpeting, upholstery.
When Colleoni asked us to draw an object to be exhibited to the Miart 2017 (the International Modern and Contemporary Art Fair, Fieramilanocity Milan), we immediately thought to something that would been able to emphasize the ability of the craftsmen working in the laboratory of upholstery since its foundation. At the same time, we wanted to realize something that would express an innovation in its simplicity, confirming as a traditional manufacturing can be contemporary.
The material gives the technological innovation of the project: a polyester yarn, loaded with mineral pigments able to store daylight or artificial light, and to release it in the darkness.
To emphasize the surprise effect, we chose to use as the base of the carpet a white fabric, characterized by a light texture rifled in which the designed seams are seamlessly hidden. In that way, by day the effect is white on white, while in darkness begins to appear the geometric decoration with warping in parallel rows embroidered with a “zig zag seam” that, remembering the carpet of Penelope in the Homeric epics, appears and disappears.
The radius of the circle (120 cm) is given by the maximum width of the fabric production, and is obtained by two half circles rotated of ninety degrees each and joined toghether in the center with an handmade “sorfilo seam”.
Credits
Concept and design / Martinelli Venezia
Production / Colleoni Roberto & C