Affection and Objects. A Castiglioni Family Anthropology

The MAG 09/22

REVIEW by Cristina Morozzi

This book tells the story of a very special family. And it is not only a tale of people – and especially of contemporary design icon Achille Castiglioni – but of things.

In the introduction, Achille’s son Carlo Castiglioni writes, “I was born into a family in which objects have always had an important role. Not only because my father was a designer and designed them, as well as collected a large number of them, including ‘anonymous objects’, but also because I saw him interacting with them...I have very vivid memories in which I see him quickly approaching the objects he thought were the most interesting, as if he didn’t want others to see him. And he would touch them, caress them, weigh them, as if he wanted to take hold of their intrinsic qualities.

This was a way of perceiving reality and especially objects. It is no coincidence that my father used to say that things keep us company. He used to say, ‘I love all things, whether they are good or bad…I can really sense the relationship of mutual sentiment between the designer and the user’. Telling about who Achille was through his stories is not just a personal need.

 These stories are not simply something about the people they’re told about; they are the actual people themselves with their voices and ways of being, brought into the here and now so that we can continue to correspond with them”. Achille’s things are safeguarded at the Castiglioni Foundation in Milan, guarded under the watchful eye of his daughter Giovanna.

Everything has remained in place and in creative disorder, just like Achille left it. And it is not a collection of unique pieces, antiques and souvenirs, but rather a contemporary collection of various random objects which were found, at times perhaps even on the street, like the construction site lamp stolen at night from a construction area and which served as inspiration for a conference on lighting.