We The Italians | Italian design: Sara Ricciardi and her uneven road through eclectic design

Italian design: Sara Ricciardi and her uneven road through eclectic design

Italian design: Sara Ricciardi and her uneven road through eclectic design

  • WTI Magazine #115 May 19, 2019
  • 1826

Sara Ricciardi is a young designer, already recognised as one of the trailblazers of the Italian design. She was born in Benevento (Campania) where she grew up eating pomegranates and drawing on the walls: freedom characterised her childhood, as she recalls; freedom characterises her design, I add. 

She completed her studies in Arts between three very different yet inspiring cities: Milan, New York and Istanbul. She studied art living in three different continents. Through the years, Sara has developed a very strong storytelling aesthetics; nowadays all the magics happens in the studio she opened 4 years ago. Here she plays with her ideas and her time, never talking herself too seriously, otherwise we would be missing some opportunities. 

Sara is, above all, a collector of eclectic objects: and then a designer, a a poetic one! Her day starts with a long ritual: a strong Italian coffee (after all she is a very strong Italian woman!), then she takes the coffee residue and adds some honey to it, uses this almost magical lotion to scrub her hands, an important tool of her job. The ideas might come from her beautiful mind but the hands are the ones to execute them for us to appreciate. Sara then wears eyeliner, a homege to Oriana Fallaci, another strong woman she appreciated during her teen years.

Her approach to design is always based on an investigation, a story must be present for the creation process to start and take place. There is also a deep research on the production methodology. For that she counts on highly skilled Italian artisans. One of her last work is very representative of Sara’s contrasts, of her soul, that still likes to play, like a bambina, yet able to show the sophistication of a complex woman. “Eden” is the project of the interiors of the store Luisa Via Roma, where the designer played with feathers, palms and pink fountains creating a luxurious reinterpretation of Den Bosch’s “Garden of the delights”. Luisa Via Roma’s store is almost an immersive experience, an unexpected place, something  between a lost/lust garden and a sophisticated circus.

Working on the sacred rituals of everyday life, and maybe taking inspiration from her own morning ritual, Sara has reinterpreted the wood stick essences diffuser for the brand CULTI, a brand strongly connected with the idea of cure and style. She researched the architectonic aspects of the Greek and Roman Temples, places where worship took place and the sacrality was all around.  The aroma diffuser became glass column that contain the fragrances, connected among them by details; while the fragrances conductor, the wood stick, have been poetically bended with steam. A dramatical final touch that shows us the complexity and sophistication of Sara’s design skills.

If you want to know what is going on the front row of the Italian design, be sure not to lose track of Sara: she has shown creativity, talent, elegance but always spontaneity. There is still a lot to come!