Karakter – A style between aesthetics and modernity
The Poltrona Frau group, now known as Lifestyle Design, has acquired the Danish start-up Karakter, which for years has made its main productive know-how of furnishing accessories, lighting, interior objects and gallery art. This “North Europe Cassina” (so defined by IlSole24ore), has a large catalog of high quality products, which include the contribution of contemporary designers as Aldo Bakker and PlueerSmitt, as well as excellently successful re-editions of icons designed by the masters of design such as Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni, Joe Colombo, Angelo Mangiarotti, Paul McCobb or Bodil Kjær. It is no coincidence that Cassina will make its own international sales circuit available for the distribution of Karakter products.
“I would like to welcome Karakter into Lifestyle Design. I believe this company has extraordinary potential and I am proud of its decision to join our family in order to develop this project together.”
With these words, the CEO of Lifestyle Design Dario Rinero announced the acquisition of the majority stake in the company born about two years ago in Copenhagen by the founders Christian Bjerg Elving and Kim Mekawi who in the interviews revelead confiding particularly in this strategic move as a source of new strength and driving force for the company: “With the design heritage already present in our collection and the determination to create and promote the icons of the future, it’s impossibile to think about finding a better partner than Lifestyle Design.
The huge assets that the group collects is one of the reasons we are doing what we do. We look forward to working with a group of extraordinary people and companies that share our same goals and values. We believe that Lifestyle Design can offer the necessary platform and strength to develop Karakter in the international design brand we aspire to become ”.
The Karakter catalog stands out for the use of an essential design dominated by great formal cleanliness. The lines, clear and perfectly calibrated, enhance the shape of the object itself and the function that it must do, giving the work a unity of aesthetics and use. Among the most representative works of this trend, we can mention the Side Table n. 2 by PlueerSmitt, whose perspectives gives form to a joint between seat and legs; the Console Table by Aldo Bakker, whose essentiality of pure forms create a structure of levels where equal importance is given to the top and legs; the Hanging bookcase by Achille and Piergiacomo Castiglioni, whose minimal shapes of steel and wood disappear almost in the search for the smallest possible footprint of the individual components; the Lungomare by Achille Castiglioni, a wooden bookcase where functionality and formal rigor intertwine in a structure of great aesthetic value.
These and other works of the company are available among the proposals of the Salvioni network, careful in meeting the needs and requests of the most demanding customers.
