Discover Highlights from Raritas, Salone del Mobile’s First-Ever Collectible Design Fair

If you’re looking for something that’s bright pink, translucent, and stands nearly 10 feet tall during this year’s Milan Design Week, it will not be found in one of the city’s more avant-garde show spaces. Head instead to the more corporate Fiera, or exhibition center, at Rho, 9 miles from the heart of the city. There, the item in question—a unique fountain cast in resin by the Dutch designer Sabine Marcelis—will be on show as part of Raritas, a new section in the Salone del Mobile that fills the Fiera’s multiple pavilions every year.

Raritas is a new addition to the Salone, dedicated to collectible design across all its categories, from antiques and limited-edition pieces to crafted objects and highly experimental works boxfresh from the studio. “There are 26 galleries taking part,” says Annalisa Rosso, the Editorial and Cultural Director of Salone, “and across a small area of [12,900 square feet]. But we wanted to bring a different design language to the fair.”

It will certainly introduce a variety of exhibits—from the mid-century Japanese mastery of Katsuhei Toyoguchi at Barcelona’s Slide Gallery to Lewis Kemmenoe’s freshly-made editions to his Patchwork series, made from wood-yard off-cuts, at London’s Max Radford, at 32, the youngest exhibitor.

The scenography, by Italian duo Formafantasma, will offer an antidote to the sprawling acres of contract, office, and lighting design that is the Salone’s standard offer. Their scheme has 3/4-height booths arranged along quiet aisles, their walls painted from a designated choice of subtle colors.

“I’ve chosen a kind of mineral green,” says Edward Mitterand, the Parisian dealer who will show work from the late 90s to the 2010s by Claude and Francois Lalanne on his booth. “These are very much the functional pieces by the Lalannes, and not the more sculptural ones; this is a design fair,” says Mitterand of the artists’s bi-partite practice. Prices are high nonetheless: $115,000 for a lamp; $460,000-$578,000 for the gilded bronze Williamsburg bench with its back of curving fronds. At best, he sees Raritas as an opportunity “to connect with interior architects who we don’t already know. Who have to be at Salone to look at certain factory-made furniture, but would equally like to be looking at Lalanne and other hard-to-find pieces.”

There is, of course, some debate about the context of the Salone for collectible design. It is, after all, a B2B event, where big deals are made. But Raritas has been placed in Hall 9, which, along with Hall 11, houses the grander names such as B+B Italia and Minotti. “Brands like Living Divani and Visionnaire are even starting to do limited editions themselves,” says Rosso. “The Lina Bo Bardi armchair for Arper, for example, is a limited series.” It’s also worth noting that in days gone by, when rather fewer than 300,000 people came to the Salone and the Fiera was in the city itself, the more radical players—Capellini and Edra, for example—often showed off-beat and imaginative prototypes at the Salone that were never likely to make it into production. Perhaps Raritas is stepping into that brink.

“I believe that cross-pollination is the best way to evolve,” says Maria Porro, President of the Salone del Mobile, who, apart from setting up partnerships in other territories, especially with Art Basel in Miami and Hong Kong, has been a keen advocate of this new departure. “We need to create partnerships with other worlds, other disciplines, and categories.” 

Over the 26 galleries, there will be plenty to see. Milan antiquarians Alessandra di Castro, with Florentine Bruno Botticelli, will be presenting highly stylized Venetian stone capitals and Tuscan columns from Renaissance Italy. Marta Sala Editions is showing the furniture it has produced for Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron, including the finely crafted La Magie du Bois series in Canaletto walnut designed for the interior of the storied Grand Hotel Les Trois Rois in Basel, which the architects renovated in 2024. There will be the sleek, sculpted sheet-steel furniture of Xavier Lust. Draga and Aurel, based in Como, are bringing their latest pieces—exquisite glass lamps produced with Venetian masters Salviati. “I work with many of the companies that are present at Salone,” says Sabine Marcelis. “But what brings me the most joy is when you’re trying to do the impossible, to make something that might not have an immediate purpose but showcases materials and processes and pure ideas.” Like a fabulous, 10-foot pink resin fountain, perhaps.