Total Trattoria by Martino Gamper

With 100 chairs done and dusted (and sold), Gio Ponti furniture reassembled and a Wallpaper* Design Award to boot, you’d be forgiven for assuming our favourite designer maverick Martino Gamper was entitled to a bit of time off. But we’re beginning to sense a touch of A.D.D. about the young Italian’s work ethic. Not to say this is a bad thing. On the contrary, how he conceives of his projects and undertakes them with such breezy efficiency is increasingly beyond even us.

Click here to see and read more about the dinner.

‘Total Trattoria’ is his latest project and bears all the hallmarks of Gamper’s unique style. Not one to scrimp on imagination, he proposed to London gallery owner Zeev Aram the idea of turning his fourth floor gallery into a trattoria for six weeks, with everything designed especially by Gamper. And in this case, everything really means everything, and not simply for the sake of it either; each design has a very clear concept – explained in full in an accompanying booklet.

From the napkins to the horse shoe-shaped table, the water jugs to the kitchen itself (even including a hand-rigged, temporary water supply), everything was handmade by the man himself. As if this wasn't enough of a feat Gamper himself entertained fifteen guests with an eight-course meal to celebrate the launch of the exhibition. Chef, host, carpenter, glassblower, printer and embroiderer – we’re left wondering if there’s anything he can’t do?

10 March 2008 | Design