Thirteen designers made products from a wide variety of metals ? including bronze, steel and aluminium ? but stayed away from brass for the Brassless: New Accords for the Metallic Wave exhibition at Nilufar Gallery in Milan.
Studio Vedèt, which curated the show for this year's Milano Design City event, wanted to move away from the ubiquitous brass trend.
According to the curators, brass' return to design was widely heralded in 2017. Studio Vedèt said this is usually a sign of the decline of a trend ? something the studio intends to accelerate.
Top: Object of Common Interest's Daydream shelving. Above: a bronze lamp by Carlo Lorenzetti
"Just as in the previous episodes of FAR ? the parasitic curatorial entity that lives within the spaces of Nilufar ? Brassless marries a challenging accent to the characteristic language used in the established Milanese gallery," Studio Vedèt's Valentina Ciuffi, who curated the show for Nilufar's FAR, explained. "With a light but decisive statement, it aims to accelerate the ending of the brass era, or rather, the ending of a phase in which contemporary design and architecture abused this alloy by using it randomly or needlessly."
The show was an attempt to move away from the design industry's preoccupation with brass to instead investigate the use of other metals. Designers taking part used steel, copper, gold, lead, aluminium, nickel, bronze and silver for their projects.
"Brassless is not a 'stop to brass' but r...