Ceramiche Ragno inaugurates its first flagship showroom for Fuorisalone 2022

Setting up its stage for Fuorisalone 2022, Ceramiche Ragno, a historic brand in the Italian ceramics industry, opens its first flagship showroom in Milan, designed by Benedetta Tagliabue - EMBT. The 400 square metres space, with its large arched windows overlooking Via Marco Polo in the iconic Porta Nuova district, has been interpreted by Benedetta Tagliabue as a kaleidoscope of colours, textures and patterns that tell a surprising story of the brand's history and technical and craftsmanship skills and all the expressive potential of ceramics. "Ragno's new space in Milan tells the story of our products in a fascinating and evocative way, highlighting and enhancing the ongoing evolution of our research and ceramic materials," says CEO of Marazzi Group, Mauro Vandini. "Milan is unquestionably one of the world capitals of design and architecture. With this new opening we want to consolidate the positioning of the Ragno brand within the designer community and convert this showroom into a new reference point for all our customers,” he adds.

"The idea of displaying the Ragno collections through large structures simulating a spider's web came to us from the history of the company, whose first trademark depicted a stylised spider," founder of Benedetta Tagliabue - EMBT, Benedetta Tagliabue explains about the project. "The wide range of collections allowed us to enrich this web, which is nothing more than a real material library, with different colours and finishes, creating a truly unique and evocative story within the entire space," she adds.

The flooring is the other decidedly interesting aspect of this project – a single large mosaic, a true polychrome work of art that demonstrates the superpower of stoneware to bring together glossy and matt collections with different material inspirations, from wood to marble, from cement to stone, in an absolutely harmonious and natural way.

Characterised by a long succession of arches defining the rooms and by large lateral spaces in which large windows overlooking the inner courtyard allow natural light to enter, the Ragno space presents the ceramic and stoneware collections in an entirely new display format that reveals a variety of ceramic materials available to designers and private individuals, suggesting exclusive combinations of the various surfaces in the range.

The lightness and extra-ordinary dimensions of the large, thin stoneware slabs stand out in their entirety next to the small ceramics of the Storie collection, which decorate the large display cases, hooked to a system of tie rods typical of sailing boats that once again simulates the geometry of a spider's web. The continuous mosaic on the floor dialogues with the collections hanging from the wooden structures, suggesting further combinations and readings of the materials in the different rooms and accompanying the visitors on an attractive tour.

"Ceramics is an ancient, natural material, used in construction since the beginning of mankind. We played with the theme of the spider and the web, rediscovering the history of the Ragno brand as a thread between past, present and future," says Benedetta Tagliabue. The polychrome mosaic theme also characterises the walls of the rooms overlooking the internal courtyard and the bathrooms which, like the large kitchen, use the large slabs of the Incanto marble-effect porcelain stoneware collection in a play of cuts, chiaroscuro and different textures, while a beautiful and unexpected tribute to Giorgio De Chirico, made with the small, brightly coloured tiles from the Storie collection, reinterprets one of the metaphysical paintings from the anthology "Le piazze d'Italia". "We proudly present a unique project, which tells the whole story of the value of the Ragno brand today and of new technologies applied to ceramics," Vandini declares.

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