Maison&Objet is the largest exhibition dedicated to interior decorating and creation of comfort in your home. As far as these two areas are concerned, this exhibit shows everything that you can only think of starting with crystal vases, to house slippers' inserts, to wallpaper and parrot cages. Since tile is definitely used for interior design, the Italian Tile Manufacturers Association thought that it surely needs to participate in the event and sent 23 companies to present their products. These are Appiani, Atlas Concorde, Casa dolce casa, Ceramica Bardelli, Ceramica Sant’Agostino, Ceramiche Refin, Coem, Cooperativa Ceramica d’Imola, Cotto d’Este, FAP Ceramiche, Floor Gres, Gigacer, Giovanni De Maio, Globo, Litokol, Marazzi, Marca Corona, Mipa, Mosaico+, Naxos, Simas, Valdama and Vogue.
Everything would have gone very well, but there was almost no space at Maison&Objet this year, so each of the companies only was given about 3 meters of space. Considering that most Italian new releases in the tile manufacturing business have been 80 cm and larger (as large as 2-3 meters), the abovementioned factories did not get to show a lot of tile. As a rule, one booth could only either fit several large tiles, like Atlas Concorde
or several folders of small pieces, like FloorGres
Marca Corona
or Mosaico Plus
The exhibitions format mainly supposed communication between designers and the manufacturers.
The tile pavilion was the farthers from the exit of all other Maison&Objet pavilions and considering that all other pavilions were filled with shiny and extraordinary things like paintings, frames, mirrors, chocolate, perfume, flowers and Christmas decorations, a rare visitor could retain the feeling of reality and willfully get all the way to the farthest, tile exhibiting pavilion. Those who did, felt the life go out of them at the moment they entered and they couldn't do much more.
This was the back end of Italian tile manufacturers' booths - the most demanded. Most of the time manufacturers' representatives chatted among themselves.
Or with representatives of the Tile Manufacturers Association.
At times, representatives had no one to talk to at all.
And at times, booths did not have any representatives at all.
In general, the exhibition wasn't much different from Saloni in Moscow, though Appiani did tile the Eifel tower, not the Kremlin.
It's interesting that the Italian Tile Manufacturers Association spends a lot of money on these small booths at large and expensive exhibitions, though, according to their press-secretary, it doesn't have the means to even hold contests among designers and architects for the best Italian tile project outside of Italy. Such a contest is held only in Italy and only for Italian designers, whose choice is quite obvious. The Association doesn't have a budget for any other country. Is it true that to touch a small piece of tile at a huge exhibition (considering that there are specialized tile exhibitions that are already visited by designers) stimulates more than a trip to Italy to learn installation techniques or participate in a tile specific exhibition?