Girotondo
1989 - 1992
Alessi
Stefano Giovannoni and Guido Venturini (King-Kong partnership) made their debut in the Alessi catalogue in 1989 with Girotondo (the name in Italian for the children's nursery rhyme "ring a ring o' roses"), the full expression of their research aimed at cross-pollinating good design with popular culture. The two designers chose to avoid to design the object. They select a simple basic circular plate and concentrating on what it communicates. The icon of the stylized man motif, resembling the paper-chain shapes children cut out with scissors, is a reference that belongs to all of us that taps into the world of childhood and memory. But in this case metal was used: it's a citation that everybody can understand and it brings the figurative back into a context, that of design, from which it had been banned.
In their previous works the founders of King-Kong had expressed an interest in spontaneous objects, in that whole world of objects considered to be kitsch but that ordinary people like to have in their homes: the designers' introduction of such "uncultured" references to the design world earned them the aversion of some of the so-called "prim and proper" critics. But this provocative and conscious attempt to combine design and popular culture was immediately fruitful: Girotondo hit the bull's eye, the communication worked perfectly, and the object even ended up selling ten times as much as what had been predicted by the marketing forecasts.
Girotondo marks an essential step in the company's production and in the image that the object itself communicates to the public: "There's an Alessi before and an Alessi after Girotondo", says Giovannoni. From the first object, the tray, a whole product range was born, including bread baskets, fruit holders, brooches, and so on.This is the best-selling "family" in the history of design, with record-breaking sales: more than seven million items up to now.