The collaboration between CBA and the independent bookstore Mutty continues.

This month we talk about gardens and earth products. Attention to raw materials is at the heart of the gastronomic offer of Mutty’s vegetarian restaurant, which varies its menu following the natural cycle of micro-seasonality. At the same time, the bookstore curates a selection of titles on botany, cooking, and nature, both with explorations in the artistic and design field and with essays by popularizers and scientists.

The 3 books selected in this newsletter offer a unique vision of the garden and earth products, inviting the reader to discover the secrets of cultivation through the seasons. Thanks to reflections on the environmental crisis and the importance of the bond with nature, these books represent an invitation to look beyond the family garden and reflect on mountain communities, agriculture, and the safeguarding of the planet.

Dall’orto al mondo

Barbara Bernardini
Nottetempo

“Dall’orto al mondo” is a book that tells a year of cultivations in a small domestic garden, but going beyond. The author, Barbara Bernardini, reflects on the environmental and climate crisis and its effects on the garden, inviting us to recover the bond with the earth to imagine our future. The garden is a place where you can observe nature and draw sketches of vegetable subdivision, but also where you can lose projective pretensions and digress in doodles of leaves and flowers.

Nell’orto

Elena Turetti, Giacomo Sartori, Marco Milzani
Il Cardo

The garden is a place full of meanings and requires choices and work. This book was born from the intuition that the family garden could offer a new point of view on agriculture, the safeguarding of the planet, and mountain communities. Its texture is the result of a rich series of choices that make the gardener a free hitter.

L’orto in cucina

Lucy Mora
L’Ippocampo

The Garden in the Kitchen is an illustrated guide to growing and cooking the fruits of the garden, with over 55 fruits and vegetables divided by season, sowing and harvesting tables, recipes, and tips for pot cultivation and pairings. It is a practical manual to create a home garden and enjoy every vegetable through dedicated recipes.

The collaboration between CBA and Mutty continues, and Mutty recently celebrated its first 10 anni of cultural, artistic, and culinary activities. Congratulations to Mutty!

For the fourth edition of 12×6 with Serena Gianoli, titled ‘Japonisme,’ we asked Mutty to select some titles about Japanese culture, always exploring the realms of design, art, and cuisine.

I libri di Katsumi Komagata

Lazy Dog Press

The collection begins with Katsumi Komagata, an artist who has developed a strong bond with Mutty over the years. His books, conceived as works of art for children, represent a perfect example of Japanese artistic sensibility.

Inspired by his experience with his daughter Aï, Komagata has simplified shapes and colors to offer a unique perspective of the world from a child’s point of view, combining pedagogy and anthropology. His books are considered design objects due to the use of techniques like pop-up, origami, and tangram, making them appealing to both children and adults. This new edition contains over 100 illustrations of Komagata’s works and is a must-have for enthusiasts of his contributions to global publishing, design, and graphic arts.

Japanese Interiors

Mihoko Iida
Lazy Dog Press

Author Mihoko Iida explores the art of Japanese residential interiors, presenting an analysis of the diverse design of spaces in private homes.

The book showcases twenty-eight exemplary residences scattered throughout Japan, from urban dwellings to mountain apartments and seaside houses. Iida highlights the enduring philosophy of integrating the natural landscape into the homes and illustrates the influences and ongoing evolution of Japanese interior design. The book also features homes designed by some of the leading Japanese architects, including Kengo Kuma, Nendo, Koji Fujii, Arata Endo, and Takamitsu Azuma.

L’essenza del colore nel design giapponese

Rossella Menegazzo
L’Ippocampo

This volume delves into the roots of traditional Japanese colors, which trace their origins to ancient traditions and nature. Initially adopted to signify rank, these colors have seen their meanings expand over time to encompass a wide range of design objects today.
The book presents 200 colors, each illustrated by objects spanning from the 16th century to the present day. They highlight both well-known designers such as Naoto Fukasawa and Issey Miyake, as well as lesser-known talents rooted in Japanese tradition.
Each color is described with information about its origins and cultural influences, including the pigments used and the historical figures associated with these shades.

Tokyo Stories

Tim Anderson
EDT

“Tokyo Stories” is a culinary journey through the vibrant city of Tokyo. The book explores the eclectic culinary world of this city, from the delights of corn cream vending machines to ramen and gyoza shops, presenting over eighty authentic recipes. The author, Tim Anderson, also shares anecdotes and photos from his travels. This book is a tribute to Japanese cuisine and is perfect for Japan enthusiasts and lovers of its delicious flavors.

The collaboration between CBA and the independent bookshop Mutty continues. This month we talk about the combination of gastronomy and editorial design.

Cookbooks have always been among the bestsellers in Italy, and in every bookshop the section dedicated to cookbooks, manuals and guides is constantly growing in number and variety. But not every cookbook combines usefulness and beauty, and that’s what we and Mutty have been dealing with.

So today we will tell you about our small selection of publishing projects that combine a special focus on the design of the book with some relevant and current trends, such as anti-waste and sustainable food.

Scarti d’Italia 2 | From North to South, a green culinary adventure where nothing is wasted

Valentina Raffaelli – Luca Boscardin
Corraini editore

Scarti d’Italia 2 is a cookbook that embodies sustainability, where each recipe reminds us that Italy is a great garden, and that we only need to sharpen our eyes in local markets to find an immense wealth at our fingertips.

This exploration, which combines the knowledge of designer cook Valentina Raffaelli and the illustrations of Luca Boscardin, is the second chapter, after the one dedicated to offal and what we normally discard of meat. After the sell-out success of volume 1, the authors now delve into the field of agriculture, looking at the current system of production and distribution, and once again prompting us to ask questions: do vegetables have to be “beautiful” to be “good”? How much food do we waste? And how many products do we not even consider?

La grammatica dei sapori VEG

Karen Page
Gribaudo

People have always chosen to adopt a vegetarian or vegan food style for various reasons: ethical, economic, linked to personal or planetary well-being. This book, however, capturing the latest international trends, suggests one more reason: “veg” cuisine, in addition to being ethical and healthy, is also able to maximize flavor, too often “masked” by heavy foods such as meat-based broths, butter, cream, and more.

“Glossary veg” presents itself as the book to discover a completely new cuisine, based on the exaltation of flavor, thanks also to the contribution of important world chefs.

Il pane è oro

Massimo Bottura
Phaidon

“These dishes can change the way we feed the world, because anyone can cook them, anywhere and with any budget. To feed the planet, we must first fight waste.”
Massimo Bottura

Massimo Bottura has been at the forefront of the fight against food waste for years, and in recent years, this issue has gained prominence. He has drawn public attention to this problem with his refectories – canteens that use surplus food from supermarkets and other local suppliers to offer healthy, seasonal meals to people in need. “Bread is Gold” proposes three-course meals conceived by 40 of the world’s greatest chefs (from Alain Ducasse to Carlo Cracco, from Davide Oldani to René Redzepi and Ferran Adrià), who have transformed humble ingredients into extraordinary dishes – 150 recipes in total.

This November, as part of our collaboration with Mutty’s cultural space, we are presenting two books, an exhibition and works of art. We are back to talking about nature because, until January 7th at Mutty, you will find the exhibition “A Stitch Out of Time” by the French artist Anaïs Beaulieu: a reflection on the fragility of the ecosystems, through the technique of embroidery and with an ironic yet pungent poetic style.

A Stitches out of Time

Anaïs Beaulieu learned to embroider when she was a child with her grandmother. A family affair that over the years has become the expressive technique used to delicately combine the tradition of the past with the contradictions of contemporaneity. The central element of the exhibition is the (F)utiles series, ten black plastic bags with hand-embroidered plant species, published in her latest book “A Stitch Out of Time”. The work stems from an image that impressed her during a trip to Burkina Faso: thousands of abandoned plastic bags scattered across the landscape, clinging to shrubs and plants. Anaïs has been an active artist in France for decades, with exhibitions at the Louvre and CNAP in Paris. In Italy, she is represented by Mutty.

A Stitch out of Time (libro)

Anaïs Beaulieu
Tara Books

Anaïs Beaulieu’s latest publication collects images of her embroideries on single-use plastic bags, typically used for waste recycling. The plant species embroidered on the plastic bags, at risk of extinction or already extinct, are a delicate gesture of redemption. The cover of each book is a physical reminder of the artwork, with an embroidered plastic panel in relief, placing the title among the artist’s books in the Mutty catalogue. The Indian publishing house Tara books is renowned for producing books in which craftsmanship and industrial typography are combined to create objects of high aesthetic and design value.

À vos souhaits

Anaïs Beaulieu
Serendip

The publication collects all the hand-embroidered ‘handkerchiefs’ by the French artist. On antique and delicate handkerchiefs, objects typical of our industrial and consumerist society are embroidered in contrast, creating a destabilizing but aesthetically appealing effect. The dichotomies that emerge are industrial/natural, mechanical/manual, speed/slowness, urban/selvish. On show at Mutty you will also find a series of these 18 embroidered handkerchiefs.

The collaboration with the independent bookshop Mutty continues.
The theme of this issue is “coming home”. The evolution of technology, daily habits and culture can often lead to a physical and sentimental estrangement from one’s place of origin. Books can undo this process, helping us recover and rebuild a link with the past and our idea of home. More than this, they can soothe the feeling of nostalgia, or so-called “pain of return”, part of Western heritage since Ulysses.
Here are three books that do it just right through words and images.

Dove c’era un prato

Jörg Müller
Lazy Dog Press

A changing landscape, a house that’s no more.

Seven masterful drawings portray the same landscape over the span of 9 years, from 1953 to 1972, showing the radical changes in such a short time. Swiss artist and illustrator Jörg Müller’s debut, the book was first published in 1973 and made the author internationally known. At the time, the work was a sensation in the world of picture books, and sure enough the new edition reminds us of its unchanged relevancy today.

Case milanesissime

Alvar Aaltissimo
Corraini

City homes between irony and reality

A compendium of surreal (or hyperreal?) floor plans of imaginary flats available for rent or sale in Milan like the “Room in a façade cavity” or the “Apartment in the Milan that never sleeps” with a treadmill to boot. A rather serious satire on the world of contemporary design and a reflection on life in a metropolis.

Una mamma è come una casa

Aurore Petit
Topipittori

When the home is ONE person

A mother is a home, nest, fountain, shelter, mirror, tree, show, hurricane, doctor and medicine… A mother can be read in a thousand different ways, just like a book. Across the forty-eight pages, designed by a French illustrator and graphic designer, the book shows us all – adults and children alike – the many metaphors existing within a mother. The volume holds a little extra: opening the dust jacket, you will find a beautiful poster.

Addressing the topics of food and restaurants in the Italian publishing world, Mutty has chosen to present L’Integrale. This four-monthly magazine adds a further narrative element to the business experience of the baker Davide Longoni, lending consistency and “fragrance” to an all-round project that sees the Milanese entrepreneur inspire and support the launch of a magazine that is beautiful as well as interesting.

L’Integrale is a magazine that draws inspiration from the subject of bread, to then examine the world that develops around it, reflecting the thinking of the baker Longoni, who says that his bread is made above all “outside the workshop”, because it is agriculture, exchange, conviviality and much more. This cultural view of the baking profession has led to the emergence of the “publishing extension” that is represented by this magazine, now in its third edition, an issue dedicated to Fire. The magazine is part of the Mutty selection not only due to its content, in which gastronomic experimentation is combined with an idea of true sustainability, but because it is a beautiful magazine, where the bold illustrations by Gianluca Cannizzo share space with contemporary photographic projects, all framed in a graphic style that pleases the senses of both sight and touch.

The first three issues offer a wide range of stories that show the scope and importance of the term “bread”; ranging from new methods of cereal cultivation to the threats to agriculture caused by climate change; from recipes for sourdough to a graphic novel on the cutting of firewood. There are also lots of answers to important questions: what is a good diet? Can AI substitute the baker in the dough-making process? Why is the toasted sandwich an expression of the contradictions of food capitalism? Each issue is a collection of essays, reports, stories, photographs, illustrations and recipes; all good reasons to read this new magazine about bread and culture.

Over the next few months, by means of a selection of significant publications, we will describe the link between enterprise and design, a relationship that has always proved to be positive, and that has contributed to the history of many brands, artists and designers.

We have already introduced the Mutty cultural space, which accompanies us on this path with its bookshop specialising in images. After having presented Adriano Olivetti’s famous pubic speeches, now we will discover how to “move from theory to facts”: how have enlightened entrepreneurs historically turned to designers to give their brands added value?

Let’s recommence from an Olivetti experience, describing the relationship between Ettore Sottsass and the Olivetti company that you can discover in the title Sottsass Olivetti Synthesis (Va.Aa., published by Edizioni di Comunità), a volume that presents the results of one of the most famous collaborations between design and industry. It was 1968 when Roberto Olivetti, Adriano’s son, commissioned Sottsass with the design of a new office furnishing system: the result gave rise to Serie 45. This comprised over 100 minimalist, functional furniture components, but with an ironic touch in their colour and details, expressing Sottsass’ critical approach to the modern industrial age, which he considered as excessively optimistic. The book includes the origins of this adventure, with hitherto unpublished documents and photographs.

How does the relationship between an entrepreneur and a designer develop? Everything begins with the industrialist’s intuition and the desire to bring new things into existence, utilising the country’s finest intellects, even the most critical, and giving them not just resources and means, but also a generous amount of trust, permitting the emergence of unique, authentic viewpoints. When this occurs, a magical process takes place, leading to the creation of designs, works and pieces that leave a mark in the history of enterprise and survive changing fashions, remaining present over time.

You can find this publication, out of print at the publisher, in the Mutty bookshop:

Take a look

As brand consultants, our principal craft is to be inspired in order to bring suggestions, stimuli and creativity to our clients. We are in constant contact with challenging ideas, in part through our relations with niche structures linked to the local environment through culture.

One of these structures is Mutty, a cultural space with an independent bookshop, which has been operating at Castiglione delle Stiviere (in the province of Mantua), not far from Lake Garda, since 2013.

Mutty, a cultural space with an independent bookshop

FIND OUT HOW WE WERE INSPIRED BY THE MUTTY BOOKSHOP THIS MONTH

These booklets, printed by the publishing house founded by Olivetti himself and now run by his grandson, contain transcripts of the speeches made to his employees in Pozzuoli and Ivrea and on other public or political occasions, in which Olivetti’s distinctive, visionary and sometimes literary words describe his Communities for us.

The company is born in symbiosis with the social fabric within which it exists, supplying material sustenance, welfare tools and educational facilities. Therefore, through a blend of technical expertise, culture and spiritual values, a possible combination of the capitalist and socialist vision took shape, in the midst of the Cold War epoch.

These are direct sources, well worth reading to understand why still today, Olivetti is considered the world over as a pioneer of a social economy that does not sacrifice the common good for the sake of mere profit.