This chair was created in prison: 7 highlights from the design fair EDIT Napoli
Instead of a few thousand, EDIT Napoli has "only" over 100 exhibitors. I was there and met the people who made the objects with their own hands: a ceiling lamp made of Styrofoam, a washbasin from the potter's wheel, chairs made of storm-felled wood, built by inmates. Seven stations have stayed with me.
EDIT Napoli is not the kind of fair where you tick off new releases. The studios showcased are small manufacturers that produce and distribute their own goods. No corporate booths. The curatorial work begins "with the exhibitors and designers, their research, and the questions that shape their objects," says curator Domitilla Dardi in the fair's press release.
This changes how you move through the space. You stand next to the person who made the product and ask them what it is made of. Most of the time, you get a different answer than you expect. Namely, not one about a material, but one about people. Who helped build it. In which workshop. For one chair, the answer led to a detention center near Milan.
1. Material from a one-kilometer radius
Guess what this ceiling lamp is made of. Glass? Paper? Both wrong. It is Styrofoam. More precisely: transport foam that Lucas Muñoz Muñoz and the Ex-Debris workshop collected within a radius of exactly one kilometer around their studio in Madrid's Tetuán district. "Urban extraction" is what Muñoz calls the principle. The radius is not arbitrary, but a rule: anything further away is out of the question. In this way, the studio transforms "ephemeral industrial residues into meaningful, long-lasting objects," he says.
The shape of the ceiling lamp cites the Farolillos Granadinos, the traditional lanterns from Granada. Only here, the foam replaces both materials at once: glass and metal. You actually know that Styrofoam is translucent. You just don't know that it glows so warmly.
But the decisive factor is the surface. You can see what it was before: the shapes of the packaging remain visible.
The fact that waste doesn't have to look like waste was a theme at this fair. At another booth, it visually resembled stone.
2. Furniture that looks like stone
The studio Debonademeo has designed a furniture collection for the manufacturer Chroma Composites that looks as if it came from a southern Italian quarry. In fact, it consists of a mineral composite material with recycled aggregates.
"Due/Sicilie" alludes to the historical Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. For this, Debonademeo looked at the floors, walls, and textiles in southern Italy's churches, palaces, and piazzas: ancient decorative patterns that the studio treats like an alphabet. Vases, side tables, and other objects reassemble these signs in simple forms and Mediterranean colors. Depending on the light, the same surface appears flat or three-dimensional.
3. Kørrom: from agency to workbench
For twenty years, Jeremy Hollister ran an internationally active creative agency in New York. Today, he lives in Scotland and works with local wood, slate, steel, and fine veneers for his studio called Kørrom.
The designs have a graphic touch: clear edges, hard contrasts. Each shade is a block with a grain that looks like topography or a fingerprint. The base continues the same pattern.
One detail I particularly liked: the light source runs on a battery and can be removed. With so many cordless lamps, it is permanently installed. Not here.
4. When ceramic is the structure
Terzofoco does not treat ceramic as a coating, but as a load-bearing mass. The LuneUp H2O collection by Emanuel Gargano was shown in its entirety for the first time in Naples, with a freestanding washbasin, pouf, and a bathtub as the largest piece. Only the washbasin is turned on the potter's wheel, and completely so. The tub is made of fireclay.
Fireclay has an exciting side effect: it keeps water warm longer than other materials.
5. Chiara Lionello: objects waiting for a gesture
Chiara Lionello won the fair prize in 2025 and was therefore allowed to exhibit for free this year. The architect and researcher from Milan designs objects that are intentionally unfinished. "Inserti" is a vase series consisting of two parts: a handmade ceramic vase and a narrow bridge made of anodized aluminum that sits on the edge and holds the flowers. Only together do they create a small architecture. And even without flowers, it is an eye-catcher: glossy gray glaze, a sloping edge, plus the orange bridge.
"Cestina" also waits for an action: a mouth-blown pitcher with an oversized colored handle. The model is the Hanakago, the traditional Japanese baskets for Ikebana. The handle is deliberately so large that you grip the pitcher differently than conventional jugs: slower, more attentively. Pouring water becomes almost a small ritual.
But no one at this fair showed as clearly as the next project that a design changes how people behave.
6. Tempesta: chairs from prison
The piece of furniture that occupied me the longest was built in the carpentry workshop of the Monza detention center near Milan. The wood comes from city trees that fell victim to a storm. Hence the name Tempesta, Italian for storm. Over four months, three groups worked together there: inmates, carpenters, and the team from Monoferments. Experienced hands and those who were just learning. The result is a chair. "Tempesta in Galera" is the name of this part of the project, which translates roughly to "Storm in Jail."
At Monoferments, a design always begins with what is already there. Elise Evaso and Luca Guglieri founded the branch in 2020 out of their Milan interior office, Monostudio: Italian companies send their production scraps, from which the team develops its own recipes. For the chair, it is fallen trees instead of factory waste.
The chair itself is only the starting point, says the team. They want to "work on the design of behavior, even before it comes to the design of the object," says Evaso. That sounds big for a chair, but it becomes concrete when you think it through: it can be built with few tools and simple skills, even where design production usually doesn't reach. Each piece is unique and bears the traces of the wood and the people who built it.
7. Common Ground: five manufacturers, one table
In the church of Santa Caterina da Siena, Margherita Rui brought five Italian manufacturers to one table, literally. Glass, terracotta, fabric, ceramic, and print were meant to speak the same visual language, regardless of the material.
This is most evident at the set table itself. The glasses come from Nason Moretti, blown in colors with names like Mirtillo or Corallo. The bowl next to it is black terracotta from Fornace Brioni, hand-formed from clay from the northern Italian Po Valley and painted with cold enamel; no two pieces are alike. Added to this are fabrics from Fortuny, forms from Imolarte, which has existed since 1874, and prints from Amenta Incisioni. Five signatures, one common table.
The table becomes what it has always been: a common ground.
What remains?
Seven stations, no common style. What connects them is something else: behind hardly any of these objects is a single person. It takes the workshop that carves the foam, the five manufacturers that are allowed to keep their signature, the people who are just learning to do carpentry.
That is exactly what drew me to EDIT Napoli: a fair where design still smells of the workshop instead of marketing. I hope this was not my last visit.
Are you interested in who made an object, or does only how it looks count in the end?
Like a cheerleader, I celebrate good design and bring you closer to everything furniture- and interior design-related. I regularly curate simple yet sophisticated interior finds, track down trends and interview creative minds about their work.
Interesting facts about products, behind-the-scenes looks at manufacturers and deep-dives on interesting people.
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