Edra was founded in 1987. Characterized from the outset by a highly innovative approach to design and manufacturing, its roots were nonetheless solidly planted in an established tradition of furniture making that the Mazzei family had maintained since 1949. The revolution introduced by Monica and Valerio Mazzei, offspring of the founding generation, and by Massimo Morozzi, art director from the start, began from a specialized knowledge of production methods and developed in one of the richest historical, artistic and craftsmanly contexts in the world, Tuscany.
The name Edra derives from a compression of the Greek word exedra, which refers to an architectural space reserved for philosophical conversation, confirming that right from the beginning, Edra was focused on the relationship between the furniture it produces and the architecture that hosts it. A relationship of respect, but also of the reciprocal ability to surprise by refusing to accept stereotypes and clichés. As such, since 1987 Edra has sought to propose innovative objects at the cutting edge of contemporary design, both formally and technologically.
Objects-icons that embody the Edra spirit and therefore difficult to imitate, far from the contrived quest for superficial details, capable of becoming ‘contemporary classics’, conserving their power over time and, precisely for this reason, achieving timelessness.
This is why Edra’s pieces are found not only in the most interesting interiors of the past quarter century, but in the permanent collections of the world’s foremost design museums, including the Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris), MoMA (New York), the Triennale Design Museum (Milan) and Vitra Design Museum (Weil am Rhein), not to mention major museums in Chicago, Lisbon, Montreal, Tokyo, Lausanne, Munich, Philadelphia, Hamburg, Tel Aviv, Vienna, Helsinki, even the remote Icelandic Museum of Design and Applied Arts in Reykjavik.
The essence of the Edra spirit derives from what can be called a policy of encounters, foremost among which was the epochal encounter with Massimo Morozzi, architect, designer and exponent in the late ‘60s of the radical Florentine groups. Morozzi proposed to Edra an approach that was absolutely atypical in Italy, consisting of advanced research, both technical and formal, whereby every project, indeed every detail would simultaneously involve the most innovative technologies and the most refined manual skills, in keeping with the motto ‘High Tech – Hand Made’.
This lateral vision, as free as it is original, made possible the other encounters that have come to define Edra. First, with Francesco Binfaré, an Italian ‘outsider’ who found in Edra the opportunity to demonstrate his unrivalled talent in designing upholstered furniture. Indeed, his famous sofas have revolutionized this heretofore static category, introducing a new concept of comfort.
Another fundamental encounter is that with Fernando and Humberto Campana, which, despite the enormous geographic and cultural distances, can be defined as ‘affinity’. The Campana brothers, by now legendary all over the world, have found hospitality and comprehension at Edra since 1998. Their language of extremes, of imagination in its pure state, of the intersection of craftsmanship and industry has since become so inextricably tied to the philosophy and know-how of Edra as to have become an indispensable key to interpreting the company’s activities.
Along with these encounters which today constitute the backbone of Edra’s production, there are others, defined as always by ‘elective affinities’, from the ironic Fiori by Masanori Umeda (1990) to the iconic homage to Tatlin’s Monument to the Third International by Cananzi and Semprini; from Zaha Hadid’s first industrial project in 1988 to the interventions by Peter Traag (2005) that straddle the boundary between art and design. In fact, it was in an art gallery, the renowned Studio Marconi in Milan, that the Edra adventure began in 1987, with a show I Nuovissimi, a series of prototypes by students from Domus Academy.
This amalgam of different realities found vigorous expression in the installations at the Milan Salone del Mobile and in the photographs of Emilio Tremolada, but above all in the innumerable instances of real life, from homes to hotels, from offices to cruise ships. The compatibility of Edra’s production with real life situations is ably witnessed by the volume Interiors: Abitare con Edra. Thanks to this compatibility, it becomes clear how an approach of timeless quality characterized by a dialogue with the most advanced components in the world of art, gives rise to concrete objects built with the most sophisticated technologies and finished with artisanal processes, which together define the quality for which ‘Made in Italy’ is known all over the world.
Edra’s pieces are thus destined to last over time, precisely because they are free from the flow of changing styles that characterize the design scene.
In the final analysis, one could define the Edra language as completely unprecedented, capable of combining global needs with refined identitary processes; of inhabiting the world with the confidence and uniqueness that has always characterized the greatest works of art.
