with his friends and his enemies, with happy people, nervous people, self-assured people, frightened, and unhappy people; he caressed my mother’s hair and mine too when I was a child to reassure me; he hammered nails, saved wood, and screwed in screws; he opened bottles of wine and bottles of mineral water; he did up his skis the memorable day he skied the thirty kilometer cross-country race, and on the 29th October, 1954, he slowly beckoned to me to come closer to him at the moment he knew he had to say goodbye.14

On a remote mountaintop, Ettore sensuously captures the essence of a man who was his protector. Returning to a place his father loved,15 he painstakingly recalls the valiance of his father’s subtle gestures. Ettore is constantly flooded by memories – people remind him of places; places remind him of people – which he embodies into the expressiveness of his work. For Ettore Sottsass, concepts are reminiscent of one another; and when visually intertwined, they create more emotionally evocative design.

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