Artist and designer Bruno Munari may be best known for the beautiful children's books he published with Edizioni Corraini [He began making children's books for his son Alberto.]
But Munari also created furniture and lighting designs and art. This stainless steel edition of a sculpture/game Acona Biconbi, was part of Munari's exploration of repetition and multiples. Galleria Corraini issued it in an edition of 50 in the early 1960's. It looks like an installation by Olafur Eliasson, which is to say it's spectacular. And it's expected to sell for 5-7,000 pounds next month at a Phillips dePury auction in London. [update: it only went for 3,000 including premium, which means a winning bid of just 2,500 pounds.]
If the exchange rate puts that out of reach, don't worry. To commemorate the centenary of Munari's birth, Corraini has just reissued the cardboard version of Acona Biconbi. Each set comes with 10 circular pieces, which can be folded and combined together into a variety of configurations. That steel orb looks to be at least five sets worth of discs, but I'll let the geodesic domeheads figure it out for me.
Former DT advertisers and Corraini fans Our Children's Gorilla have Acona Biconbi for 180SEK the EUR16+VAT, But the best price I've seen so far in the US is at the awesome San Francisco architecture bookseller William Stout, where a set [in red, white, blue, or green] is $23.50. [stoutbooks.com]
Lot 111, Oct. 13: Bruno Munari, Acona Biconbi, 1961/1964, est. 5-7,000 pounds[phillipsdepury.com]
Um... instead of the lamp, check out the
toys
[ah, you mean the slightly random and overpriced collection of jumbo machinder and chogokin robots starting at lot 250? I was tempted. If they'd had an actual Popy Garada K-7--the most sought-after toy in all Japanese toy collectordom--instead of the Unifive replica, and if that replica didn't have an estimate that was 2-7x the price for a NIB example online, I guess I'd be a bit more excited. Though it's definitely interesting to see them at a place like Phillips. -ed.]