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Maybe I’m a bit of a museum geek, but I love hearing news about what artworks museums acquire for their permanent collections. My enthusiasm goes double for design objects since they tend to receive less focus than fine art. That’s why I was so excited to learn that The Shop at Cooper-Hewitt recently acquired Sarria, a basket made by Catalan architect Lluis Clotet for Alessi.
The collection started with Foix, a round serving tray. Those same rumpled edges are amplified in Sarria, which is made from the same steel colored epoxy resin, now in super black, a new color version made with a special epoxy. It’s uniquely waterproof – pour any liquid over the surface and it will run off without wetting the basket at all. You don’t have to wait for Cooper-Hewitt to exhibit it, either. Sarria is for sale from the Cooper-Hewitt’s gift shop for the modest price of $75 (it’s $130 everywhere else).
More about Clotet, from Alessi’s bio:
Born in Barcelona in 1941. He receives the architecture degree in the “Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura” of Barcelona in 1965. In that school, he was a drawing teacher from 1977 to 1984. During the 95/96 and 96/97 courses he was a visiting professor in the P.F.C classroom and Projects I and II teacher in the 97/98, 98/99 and 99/00 courses. In 1964 he founds Studio Per in cooperation with the architects Pep Bonet, Cristian Cirici and Oscar Tusquets. With the latter, he collaborates in multiple projects until 1983. In 1984, he joins in partnership with Ignacio Paricio for the architectonic production until the year 2008. He is also a founding partner of the firm “B.D Ediciones de Diseño” There are collections of his work in the Modern Art Museum of New York (USA), in the Industrial Design Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris (France), in the Architecture Museum in Frankfurt (Germany), in the Bonnafort Gallery in San Francisco (USA), in the New York World Gallery (USA), and in the Columbia University (USA).
