Odo Fioravanti: Ivy clutch

The overlapping surfaces of the clutch designed by Fioravanti for Maison 203 become leaves of an hypnotic pattern, which draws circles and hexagonal fronds. #MDW2016

Elegant lanceolate leaves with their veins in relief and surfaces textured with very fine dots. And a drawing too – flowery and geometric at the same time – a drawing that appears and disappears, ready to vary among the tropical foliage of a climbing plant.

Ivy, the new clutch designed by Odo Fioravanti for Maison 203 looks like those illustrations in the books of the first botanical explorers: true plant hunters, tireless travellers always in search of unknown seeds and flowers, ready to stun the world with their amazing discoveries.

A closer look reveals another curious similarity: the bag’s structure is based on the football shape, that is the most popular application of the truncated icosahedron – a 3D solid made of hexagonal and pentagonal faces – one of the most intriguing solids known as Archimedean or semi-regular. This is the origin of the designer’s idea to explore how disc-shaped surfaces on a icosahedric structure could intersect creating a new starred solid.

The result of this geometric and rational research paradoxically leads to a decorative effect: it happens that the overlapping surfaces of the clutch turn into leaves and become the key of a pattern that verges on the hypnotic, that draws circles and hexagonal leafy branches. A happy rhythm that speaks of far-away flowers and leaves and reminds of the fascination of the tropics.

In his second clutch for Maison 203 (here the first one) Odo Fioravanti shows his enthusiasm for investigating the dialogue between nature and artifice, geometric research and organic shapes, using the unique language offered by 3D printing. Made of sintered nylon and redefined and coloured by hand, Ivy is available in powder blue, soft white, brick red and jungle green. A thin metal chain also allows it to be used as a shoulder bag.

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