A really special compliment to our Luca Nichetto show is a limited edition of 10 “Doc” cars made only for our exhibition.

Here is what Luca had to say about “Doc”:

Each car is hand-signed by Luca, and only available through this exhibition. If you would like to get your hands on one, please send us an email. This special collector’s edition is $120CAD each and is available in store and online.

Visit TobeUs for more details!

Currently on display until February 9 at the Design Exchange is 100% TOBEUS: 100 DESIGNERS FOR 100 NEW TOY CARS.

TobeUs was born as a vent of a designer who became a father and could not stand the sight of his own children using toys for just a few hours and then destroying them or stopping looking at them.

This is how the idea of TobeUs was born: toy cars made of wood, strong and sweet-scented, beautiful and clever because they are planned by skillful and passionate designers.

TobeUs has become synonymous with a way of design and the creation of new objects, attracting designers who want to design their own TobeUs. It seems that everyone has an idea for a wooden toy car in their drawer. Be careful, though, TobeUs is made by two cuts in a wooden stump that always has the same size. It is a project exercise that imposes clear limitations.

Matteo Ragni has gathered the the projects of the great masters of Italian design and curated “100% TobeUs: 100 Designers for 100 New Toy Cars”. Following a successful run at the Museo della Scienzae della Tecnologia di Milano, the exhibit comes to Design Exchange to show the value of a different future.

Featuring designs by Marcel Wanders, Mario Bellini, Fernando and Humberto Campana, Claesson Koivisto Rune, Matali Crasset, and many more.

Wednesday night we hosted the first Canadian exhibition for Italian designer Luca Nichetto. It was an incredibly cold night, but we were so happy to see the showroom quickly fill with hundreds of people for our opening reception.

A platter of meats, cheeses, and our newly installed brass pendant lights by Jonas Lindvall for Wastberg.

The exhibition was the debut of the Sucabaruca coffee set, as well as a retrospective of some of Luca’s most iconic works.

The round tables from the Wolfgang series Luca designed for Fornasarig created a collection of “lilly pads” for displaying all of the exhibited works.

Luca Nichetto talking to Scott Eunson who made the model used to create the porcelain slip-cast for the coffee set.

The next morning Juli took some photographs of the showroom without people in them. Ceramic bookend for Petite Friture.

We debuted the coloured versions of Sucabaruca during the exhibition, so these haven’t been shown anywhere yet. The collection called “pop” is a tribute to the eclectic artist Jean-Paul Goude. As well as the 1980s Memphis movement.

The white porcelian set is inspired the fashion designer Martin Margiela.

The pastel tones are reminiscent of the colours and sensitivity used in Japanese architecture.

Stereo chair with oak legs for Casamania, Italy and a sandcast aluminum and oak side table for David Design, Sweden. Sitting on top is Luca’s timeline bowl for Swedish brass maker Skultuna.

A cedar wood “Doc” car designed for part of the collection of toy cars by TobeUs – a project, 100% TobeUs, devised by Matteo Ragni.
Its goal is to take us back in time to the age of lightheartedness, if only for a few moments.

We received two Design Lines loves tags, thank you very much for the support!

Red Spoon vases for Salviati, Stewie floor lamp for Foscarini, and Timeline bowls for Skultuna.

Ceramic clocks for Petite Friture.

A ceramic floor lamp called “Vader” for Swedish design company David Design, as well as a concrete bench designed for Beijing Design week.

A beautiful glass vase for Salviati.

The ceramic umbra vase for Bosa.

Sali Tabacchi designed an incredible book to compliment the exhibition. Luca had the idea of using these brass paper weights to keep the book open and lined them up on our long teak shelf.

Luca Nichetto + Mjolk Opening

Location: Mjölk, 2959 Dundas Street West, Toronto, ON M6P 1Z2
Date: 22 January 2014 Time:  7 -9 pm (please RSVP)
Luca Nichetto will be in attendance.

“The collaboration between Luca Nichetto and the Mjölk gallery started during the first visit of the Venetian designer in Canada, where, taking the suggestion of his friend Eero Koivisto he visited the Mjölk gallery, where he met with the gallerists John Baker and his wife Juli Daoust.

The warm and elegant environment, fitted out with finely crafted objects from all over Japan and Scandinavia, put Nichetto immediately at ease. During pleasant conversations with John and Juli, their common passion for design and detail have led them to think of a collaboration, which resulted in a product specifically designed for their gallery, along with a solo exhibition containing some of the projects, the designer, has created in his career.

The product created for Mjölk is the coffee set called “Sucabaruca”. It is a project that, from the start, has been involving people from different cultures and countries: Juli and John who, with passion, collect and distribute in Canada products mainly from Scandinavia and Japan; the Canadian ceramist Alissa Coe, who made the prototypes, skillfully interpreting our project; Lera Moiseeva, designer and artist of Russian origin, but New Yorker by adoption, who contributed to the development of the coffee set in collaboration with Nichetto´s studios in Sweden and Italy; and Elena Freddi, collaborator at the studio in Stockholm, who took care of the set up for the exhibition “Luca Nichetto + Mjölk” in Toronto. All these people have enriched the project, making it an extraordinary melting pot of ideas and energy on an international scale.

The “Sucabaruca” coffee set is rich in cultural and formal references that come from  the influences of several people involved in the project. The main cone-shaped body is reminiscent of “Carmencita”, the famous character created by Armando Testa in 1966 for the tv show“Carosello”. The patterns, hand-engraved by hand in the ceramic, are meant to emphasize the uniqueness of the pieces, as well as for the tray, manufactured using material such as Canadian maple wood, which always reveal new and unique patterns when carved. Just like in a game, the set elements can be stacked and combined as desired, indulging in the different personalities offered by 3 colour palettes, from total white, inspired by the fashion designer Martin Margiela, to pastel tones, characteristic of Japanese architectures, and eventually pop colours, a tribute to the eclectic artist Jean-Paul Goude.”