illy Accessories
the cup as canvas
The aesthetic pleasure of a masterpiece and the sensory pleasure of extraordinary coffee meet in a simple but perfect object: the illy cup. Created in 1990 by designer Matteo Thun, the illy cup has an unmistakable shape crafted to enhance enjoyment of the coffee experience-a true syntheses of beauty and functionality with a signature white curve that is caressed with both the eyes and the hand.
In 1992, the first illy collection of signed and numbered cups was introduced. Since then, a number of renown contemporary artists, including James Rosenquist, Jeff Koons, Julian Schnabel and many others, have been invited to use the illy cup as their canvas. The limited edition cup sets are extraordinary, unique works of art and are prized by coffee connoisseurs and collectors around the world.
Pistoletto Foundation Tatiana Goloviznina, Natasha Jancovich, Fratelli Fortuna, Alfredo Luis Vasquez 2005
illycaffe met the four artists of the Pistoletto Foundation illy collection 2005 in a special place, called Unidee, which it has been associated with and has supported for several years. This is a training laboratory where, for three months a year, Michelangelo Pistoletto gathers together young people from across the world, to work on creative projects which can change something in society or just in our way of living in it.
A red cup and a simple question for Tatiana Goloviznina: is the cup half empty or half full? This question has always separated optimists from pessimists, but it is also a starting point for taking an unbiased look at ourselves and at others.
Natasha Jancovich has designed a yellow cup where man and nature have left their mark and a wheel of letters on the saucer reminds us that "Every step we take, we keep the environment in mind."
The white cup by the Fratelli Fortuna is a round, practical handbook on sign language. For communicating with those who can see and touch us, but not hear us.
The blue cup by Alfredo Luis Vasquez is a starry vault, his saucer is a clock telling us the time when we are alone with the sky, and it lets us know that man is linked to everything around him.
The Blue Hour by Jan Fabre 2007
Like a renaissance artist, Belgium artist Jan Fabre has been a vital part of the contemporary art scene for thirty years, continuously shifting from drawing, the plastic arts, videos and theater to choreography and writing. His refusal to be bound by standard definitions of art can be seen his passion for the natural sciences, inherited from his great grandfather, the famous French entomologist Jean-Henri Fabre: insects of all kinds inspire both his drawings and his theater work.
The Blue Hour is the moment when night turns into dawn, when the nocturnal animals make way for daylight creatures. It is a magical time suspended between dark and light, a moment of transformation. A metamorphosis belonging to insects, to human existence, and to the essence of art itself.
Atelier Van Lieshout 2005
At the Atelier Van Lieshout, founded in Rotterdam in 1995, a team of artists, designers and craftsmen create objects, works of art and architecture for people's daily lives. Furniture, sculptures, mobile home units, and even an entire district in the town port. Practical, simple constructions and objects, made of recyclable materials and bright colors.
Many represent human beings or penetrate the body to reproduce the internal organs. Placed in a house or outdoors, they speak about continuity and the ongoing exchange between man and the environment he lives in.
This is the theme chosen for this illy collection of four cups. Drawings half way between an anatomy table and radiography describe the different paths of coffee from the mouth to the brain, via colorful systems and organs.
Michael Beutler 2007
Michael Beutler, though his age, si already a well reputed artist.
In Japanese, the word Origami means literally "folding the paper", and it has in it all the fascination of a n ancient art, able to give shape to several three dimension objects, just folding thin sheet of paper.