Stefano Seletti

It all began in China in 1972. And if we consider that Mao died in 1976 we realize that we are talking about a time when communist China was at its maximum expression. It was a very difficult place for a Westerner to deal with because it had parameters that were diametrically opposed to ours. We slept surrounded by rats, there was no air conditioning. My father was helped to overcome these difficulties thanks to his very poor peasant origins. When he found himself faced with that extreme poverty, he knew how to manage it because he knew it almost perfectly.

Yes, I remember seeing my father leave with a box of biscuits in his suitcase. It was for the mice he allegedly found in his hotel room. He placed it on the bedside table so the mice ate the biscuits and left him alone.

Because the first Arts and Crafts products came from this country. Bamboo pen baskets, trivets, honeycomb cotton tea towels, corn car backrests. The great strength of that country was the manpower and therefore productions at highly competitive prices. Today that is no longer the case. If you are looking for cheap labor you have to go to Vietnam, Cambodia or the Philippines.

I started following my father when I was 17 in 1987. I remember that at the time people still got around in China by bicycle, while cars were very rare. Yet, visiting this country two or three times a year, I discovered its incredible ability to evolve. Every six months there was something new. One year there were only bikes, the next year only cars. One year everyone was honking their horn, the next year nobody was doing it anymore. One year the hotel was full of prostitutes, the next year there were none. This allowed me to experience past, present and future at the same exact moment. I learned about their legendary production capacity that changed at the speed of light. So I decided to do the same and tried to transform things even though I’m not a designer.

“Estetico quotidiano”. This collection has led Seletti from yesterday’s large-scale retail trade to today’s retail. It all started in an elementary way: I simply took the plastic coffee cup or the pastry paper tray to a porcelain factory and asked to reproduce it. The product was already designed, it was enough to simply make it. In this way, a line of Art de la table was born, perfect for shops like Colette or HiTech that usually did not deal with Art de la Table.

It is a philosophy that makes us think in a new way. It is precisely this philosophy that has allowed us to involve other product sectors, such as lighting. I knew we couldn’t compete with giants like Artemide, Flos and Foscarini so we thought about lighting up a room using emotion. Hence the idea of the Neon Font, the luminous alphabet or putting a light bulb in the hands of a monkey. (R)Evolution is our primary philosophy.

Creativity is essentially innovation. You always have to do something that no one has ever done before. Maurizio Cattelan taught me that. For him and also for us it is a constant challenge.

Very very thin. But it’s a talent I’ve managed to hone over the years, even making mistakes. Working alongside brilliant minds like those of Toilet Paper or Studio Job helped me take risks.

Yes, they had come to visit me and had been struck by the milk pots that my father imported in the 70s. They told me: “It would be nice to apply such a contemporary and irreverent image to an object with such a large memory”. From here was born a collection presented first by Rossana Orlandi and then ended up even at the MoMA in New York. That meeting was a real short-circuit because a simple metal cup made by a cool company and combined with a photo signed by an artist had never before ended up on the shelves of the trendiest boutiques in the world for only 12 euros. That idea destroyed the concept of gadget allowing us to create something never seen before.

They are emotional. We did a survey and found that a lot of people chose to name the Monkey Lamp. Well, getting to give an identity to an inanimate object is the most beautiful thing that can exist.

First because it is something that never existed. Second because it is elegant and provocative at the same time and makes you feel different. Our objects are not more beautiful or uglier than others. But they are different. They may or may not like it. For example, my mother doesn’t like them (Laughs). But those who appreciate us really love us madly. We have a community that we interact with every single day of the year. It’s like an extended family.

When something is taught to you it already belongs to the past. Being academic risks keeping you a little too tied to the past.

I would try in every way to make him understand that there is no difference.

The Ettore Sottsass bookshop for Memphis. Because it’s a wonderful mistake.

There are a thousand.

Because my roots are deep. Because I have the headquarters of Seletti there. Work is my life and it offers me the opportunity to travel, have fun and meet special people. This is why I wanted to transform the Cicognara headquarters into a showroom where it is very nice to work.

The infinity symbol.

There are so many things at stake. From my new Ritos clothing line, where I chose to apply trimmings typical of the world of furniture to the garments up to the Magna Grecia collection, made in terracotta together with the Calabrian artist Antonio Aricò and recently presented in Paris.

Well, at 14 I had no particular dreams. I only dreamed of going to the parish to play. I really started dreaming when I was 17, after that famous trip with my father. In 40 days we crossed India, Thailand, the Philippines, Cambodia, Vietnam. It was shocking. I remember that I kept repeating myself: is all this really outside Cicognara? It was at that moment that the desire to explore both the world and the boundaries of creativity was triggered in me. All while always trying to pursue one goal: to satisfy the tastes of a wide variety of people.