Brand Profile
Brand Overview
Located in the hills of Tuscany that surround Florence (Italy), Giuliano Mazzuoli has for three generations produced products that are characterized by an untiring pursuit of the high standards of quality craftsmanship, design
innovation and creativity typically associated with products made in Italy. Giuliano Mazzuoli finds inspiration for his creations in every day objects creating timeless pieces that capture the imagination of the world.
Brand History
In the early seventies Giuliano Mazzuoli took over the business his father had founded in 1953. The company produced the paper inserts and address books for the Florentine leather trade. When Mazzuoli took over he modernized the company and started producing advertising catalogues primarily for the furniture and interior design industry. In 1993 Mazzuoli developed the idea for an innovative agenda book. The agenda book was different from any other agenda book available on the market at the time because it featured a weekly layout with plenty of space to record notes. With the success of the diary the range of products produced by the company began to grow. The company started getting people’s attention because of the innovatively cool covers that were made stiff yet flexible (“Stifflexible”) and by transforming common notebooks with horizontal lines into notebooks with wavy or slanted lines. With the request for his products on the rise, Mazzuoli started customizing his agenda books and notebooks for world-class institutions and museums like the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York.
While Mazzuoli was developing the idea for a limited edition organizer for the year 2000 a friend suggested to him to design a pen. Mazzuoli did not want to create something for the sake of creating it so he dismissed the idea. It wasn’t until he stumbled upon the inspiration for a pen that he created his first pen collection.
It was in 2001 when Mazzuoli saw some tools in a mechanical workshop that reminded him of a box of tools from his grandfather’s bicycle workshop he had played with as a child. The rediscovery of these tools recalled childhood memories and he decided to commemorate these memories in a collection of pens called “Officina, Writing Instruments.” Officina in Italian means workshop. Although the instruments resemble mechanical tools, they actually serve another function – they write. Since designing his first pen, Mazzuoli’s focus has been on taking every day objects and transforming them into something different. Mazzuoli finds that in design today there is a tendency to find the same objects proposed over and over again in a different way or with a new function. It is this approach to design that has guided him in the creation of the objects that have taken his name. Giuliano Mazzuoli
Mazzuoli likes to say that he doesn’t design but merely encounters his creations. The inspiration for the Moka line came to him while he was talking on the telephone in his office and sketching randomly with his pencil. 
He only realized that what he had sketched was the famous coffee-maker designed
by Alfonso Bialetti in 1930 only after he had done it. The image recalled the
collection of coffee-makers his grandmother kept in her kitchen as decorative
items refusing to use them for their true function. Mazzuoli says, “nothing is
more difficult to design than true simplicity.” Mazzuoli remembers Bialetti’s
simple and essential design in the Moka writing instrument..
Recent Collections
Manometro
Perhaps Giuliano Mazzuoli’s most ambitious project has been the development of a fine watch.For years Mazzuoli dreamed of designing a watch that was different than any other watch already on the market. He acquired all the books and magazines he could find on the subject and he struggled to find the inspiration for just the right design. In reviewing the material he had acquired he came to the conclusion that this process would only lead him to be influenced by something that had already been done. Refusing to create something that
already existed he abandoned the initiative and threw out all the material that he had acquired on watches. It was not again until the day he looked at a pressure gauge that he found his watch, the Manometro (manometro in Italian means pressure gauge).
Once again, his inspiration came in an everyday object.
World-class, prestigious magazines and newspapers have picked up on the
Manometro’s story and have written feature articles on the watch. The Manometro
may be Mazzuoli’s greatest achievement. The handcrafted stainless steel watch
combines the most reliable Swiss movement with an Italian design characterized
by its unique, simple, and essential style. The watch triumphantly debuted in a
selective number of the most prestigious watch and jewelery retailers in the world during the second half of 2004. Because the watch is not an object so easily found, it has become sought after by high-profile personalities thus becoming a sort of status symbol and a rarity accessible to the few. High-profile, celebrity personalities from the world of entertainment, fashion, sports, industry, journalism,and politics have all been seen wearing the Manometro. Word-of-mouth has been the key to the watch’s early success.
Manometro, it has quickly become the watch to wear. Mazzuoli, a self-taught designer pushes the philosophy of niche luxury to the extreme by offering a high-quality product at an accessible price that is not easily obtainable.
Once someone starts wearing the Manometro, they do not want to take it off. The watch tends to be an object admired even from afar...that is if you can not get your hands on one.
External Links
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Owner: "Hbcrunch" Last edited on October 31, 2006 7:20 pm by "Hbcrunch"
