A coffee at the spoon

They have known each other for forty years and everything they touch turns to gold. Paola Navone, former muse of the Memphis movement and the avant-garde Alchimia studio, is a world-renowned Italian architect and designer who really needs no introduction, while artistic director Daniel Rozensztroch was one of the architects behind the success of the Merci concept store. “Daniel is my spiritual twin”, Paola maintains. “We share the same taste for popular objects that have a history, and we prefer layering things that create a very personal feel over formal design”, her friend continues. 

When Maison&Objet asked them to design an event restaurant at the heart of the show, they were immediately inspired by Daniel’s fabulous collection of antique spoons. This unique café, where you can eat at any time of the day, was very appropriately named La cuillère (‘The Spoon’). A compulsive collector himself, the former journalist hunted out everyday objects over the course of his travels, sometimes accumulating up to 2,000 brushes or 600 brooms amassed from far and wide. He now has some 2,000 spoons made of everything from metal and horn to porcelain, glass, bone and even mother-of-pearl. “The spoon is a universal, almost essential item”, he says. “It was invented long before the fork. It’s the first tool we learn to use as babies, and even the last one we use to feed ourselves when we are very old. It symbolises exchange and generosity, while its round edges represent softness. It’s just a beautiful container, and a collection allows us to analyse the continuity of the item and to put the expertise involved into perspective so that we can draw inspiration from it today”. Paola and Daniel consequently decided that everything served in the restaurant should be eaten with a spoon, be it breakfast, lunch, an afternoon snack or a pre-dinner aperitif. 

The ambience here is deliciously regressive. “The spoon represents the conviviality of the cuisine of yesteryear, complete with red and white gingham oilcloth and lace curtains”, Daniel Rozensztroch explains. Make no mistake, though: this nostalgia is accompanied by a definite conceptual shift. Paola Navone has skilfully manipulated these codes to create the feel of a contemporary inn, complete with large Plexiglas dining tables, held together by straps and mounted on untreated breeze blocks. These also double as transparent display tables, where visitors can admire each of the pieces in the collection, categorised by theme, as they sip their coffee. The facades, meanwhile, are lined with gingham tiles topped with white paper lace friezes that were laser-cut by the team at French living heritage firm Procédés Chénel. Another distracting feature is the wallpaper, by Dutch publisher NLXL, on which giant images of the spoon collection are displayed. “Paola is amazing”, her friend maintains. “She has the ability to improvise a dinner for twenty people, even though she’s not prepared for it, and her imagination means she can take anything she has to hand and create a magical and poetic ambience. Modernity is not about spending crazy amounts of money on a complete look; it's about bringing the past and the future together, it's about shifting different eras around and layering them on top of one another”.