Nomada Magica

Otto 82 Daybed via bedzine.com

Italian-born designer Paola Navone always seems at ease and relaxed as she trav­els the world. Juxtaposed with her calm, beau­ti­fully refined pres­ence  is a tur­bu­lent, vision­ary mind chew­ing up expected notions and banal con­ven­tion.  She flu­ently morphs from archi­tect, designer and art direc­tor to inte­rior dec­o­ra­tor and exhi­bi­tion and event orga­nizer. Through it all, her visions remain reflec­tive and uncommon.

Born in 1952 in Balzona, the south­ern por­tion of Turin, a young girl quickly grew to learn the value of cre­ation by hand­craft­ing her own dolls and trea­sures. She rejected tra­di­tional paths that were envi­sioned for her by her par­ents. Constant were her envi­ron­men­tal explo­rations in order to sat­isfy her self-described com­pul­sive and all-consuming curiosity

Ms. Navone stud­ied archi­tec­ture at the Turin Polytechnic. Her early pro­fes­sional career was devoted to break­ing through func­tional bound­aries with her pieces. She gained wide­spread acclaim for her work with the Alchimia group, which opposed the struc­tural design iden­tity of that time by plac­ing empha­sis on col­ors, tex­tures and dec­o­ra­tive ele­ments. Such avant-garde work was hon­ored in 1983 by the recep­tion of the pres­ti­gious International Design Award of Osaka. For the past thirty years, she has been an refresh­ing fig­ure in the male-dominant Italian design scene.

Metal Garden Chair via marieclairemaison.com

Ms. Navone holds excep­tional knowl­edge of a vast array of world­wide mate­ri­als, whether Indian tex­tiles, New Zealand wool, Moroccan fab­rics orAsian stones. She is a true cit­i­zen of the world, divid­ing her time between Milan, Hong Kong, Paris and Greece. She envi­sions her­self as an “enlight­ened and enlight­en­ing eth­nic nomad’. She is known as an “objet magi­ci­enne”. She strives to cre­ate design mon­grels by min­gling mod­ern bril­liance with tra­di­tional hand­craft, plac­ing value on artis­tic con­cep­tions born almost by mistake.

Over her long and pres­ti­gious career she has devel­oped an immense client base and col­lab­o­rated with pin­na­cle com­pa­nies such as Abet Laminati, Armani Casa, Knoll International, Alessi,  Oltrefrontiera, Casamilano, Swarkovski, Dada and Poliform Egizia. Her exper­tise in exhi­bi­tion design is evi­dent in the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand. In 1988 she cre­ated the Mondo brand together with Giulio Cappellini. Movements cred­ited to her intu­ition brought about large, assym­met­ri­cal lounge fur­ni­ture as well as the shabby-chic look. Paola’s Gingerbread Collection for Lando is the pin­na­cle of cre­ativ­ity. Her recent works of inte­rior archi­tec­ture include the restau­rant “Pane e Acqua” in Milan, the new Art Trading Office in Moscow and a new col­lab­o­ra­tive series of bath­room prod­ucts with Viva Ceramica enti­tled “Drops”. She has designed her own home in Greece over­look­ing the Aegean Sea. Ms. Navone has been the art direc­tor of Gervasoni since 1988.

Paola Navone is a quixotic genius. Her soul over­flows with fla­vors, tex­tures and col­ors from the East con­trasted with forms and struc­tures of the West. Mechanized indus­trial steel out­door fur­ni­ture can be human­ized with vin­tage German knit fab­ric cush­ions.  She jolts old-world craft­man­ship against new age indus­try. She believes the future look to be about many dif­fer­ent styles unabashedly pieced together. The staff at HighStreet totally gets this and encour­ages such an approach for any home­own­ers look­ing to styl­ishly per­son­ify their own spaces .