During the period of “Salone Internazionale del Mobile 2010” in Milan, Maruni will have a joint exhibition with SIWA and  Plus Minus Zero which are both companies organized by Naoto Fukasawa.

Maruni is displaying the sofa from the Traditional Series and the armchair and table from the Hiroshima series.

With each season and each new piece, Maruni seem to tweak and gently adjust, adding the necessary elements to complement their ranges which have as much impact individually as they do as a set. No radical restyle or shock gimmicks, just proper, beautifully thought-out heirloom quality furniture.

Spazio Rossana Orlandi

Via Matteo Bandello

Maruni has pioneered impressive wooden furniture since it was founded in 1928. Following industrialisation in the 1920s, even before large Japanese manufacturers such as Toyota had been established, Maruni started mass producing furniture at its Showa Mageki Kojo (bent-wood factory) in Hiroshima.

Developed under the slogan ‘industrialising craftwork’, the company’s innovative technology enabled it to bend wood without complicated manual skills. Affected by the economic crisis in the 1990s, Maruni decided to look back to its origins, and began questioning the value and identity of Japanese culture, which had been lost during its rapid economic growth. Studying traditional aesthetic values, the company rediscovered the importance of physical sensations, characterised by the expression ‘haptic’, which has been explored by Japanese designer Kenya Hara.

For a long time in Japan, the texture of wooden architecture has been celebrated through touch and the Japanese style of living: taking off shoes indoors, and sitting and sleeping on the floor. Responding to an increasingly westernized society in Japan, Maruni’s recent collections suggest that chairs, more than other type of furniture, have the potential to heighten our experience of touch, as they come in contact with the body much in the manner of clothes.