LAPIS By CEDIT Ceramiche d'Italia
Ceramic vase
An ingenious small solid that plays on the onlooker’s visual perceptions, acquiring a different presence at every glance.
In 1968, CEDIT commissioned Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni to design “ceramic objects for small-scale production”, with the further specification that “the maximum size of each piece should be at the most of the order of 25-30 cm, in both height and width”.
With the meticulous attention to detail characteristic of their iconic creations, the two designers worked on a family of three vases, identical but in different sizes, with a strikingly original form: the perfectly circular mouth of each vertically extruded piece gradually flattens to a straight line, rather like a tiny jug with a tapered base.
The design of this part of the object is apparently irregular, generating a threedimensional form with an outline that changes depending on the observer’s viewpoint: from the front, the piece appears to be a solid, compact rectangular prism, but from the side it is a slender triangle. From the top, its shape is different again, with the circular mouth concealing the tapered body.
Exactly fifty years after the conception of this wonderful design invention, CEDIT has decided to celebrate its partnership with the genius of Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni by issuing an accurately reproduced new edition of Lapis, in its three original sizes and with a colour range that has been updated but is still strongly inspired by the first series.
In line with the precise strategy followed since its relaunch, CEDIT pays homage to the culture of design by linking a sublime example of Twentieth Century Italian creativity to that of our own time, as well as beginning its own personal design programme, which intends to draw on its incredible history and its present to produce, not only a range of exquisitely original ceramic slabs, but also ornamental ceramic objects styled by masters from the past and leading figures from the present.
The original colours of the 1968 edition – grey, brown and red, all tending to be dark – were called “Fumo”, “Castoro” and “Ciliegia”; today’s colours – grey, dark blue and red – have been given the names “Fumo”, “Notte” and “Ciliegia” respectively.
