Ptolomeo Special Edition, 2004-2024: a piece of design history

Twenty years after winning the Compasso d’Oro award, the Ptolomeo bookcase designed by Bruno Rainaldi  is back in a special edition: 99 numbered examples, to return to the roots of a visionary, poetic and timeless project.

The new and exclusive edition has been presented at the Salone del Mobile 2024 faithfully reflects the original version, as it was conceived by Bruno Rainaldi and had competed, winning it, for the Compasso d’Oro 2004: size and base are those we know – 215 cm in height, which helped to rename Ptolomeo the ‘column of knowledge’ and a polished stainless steel base -, what is brought back to the origins are the column and shelves. They return, in fact, to be made of black sheet metal used in the railway industry, raw and unabashedly industrial, exactly as Bruno Rainaldi liked it, with its blue hues and oxidised parts, never the same, because they are the result of the production process of the sheet metal which, when subjected to high heat and subsequent rapid cooling, obtains very particular blue/purple photochromes.

Enhancing the Special Edition, in addition to the designer’s signature engraved in the base – inserted to protect the originality of the bookcase due to the proliferation of copies following its overwhelming success – is a numbered commemorative plaque applied to the structure.

Ptolomeo’s project starts from a reflection on form and the container/content relationship. The basic idea is as simple as it is ingenious: to transform a pile of books into a design object. In fact, the bookcase looks like a column container where the books, placed one on top of the other, make the metal shelves disappear: the bookcase hides its shape to privilege that of the books it contains. Thus, if in design the form normally plays a fundamental role, in Ptolomeo its structure has value only to the extent that it allows the books to show themselves and become themselves, as a whole, an accessory, which connotes the space by affirming the absolute value of culture. A revolutionary project whose innovative character did not go unnoticed by the jury of the Compasso d’Oro, which in fact used this motivation to award it: “An idea full of irony to free books from floors and tables, an evocative sculpture that vertically overturns the traditional bookcase.” 

In the last twenty years, not only has Ptolomeo become a true symbol of contemporary design, but the collection has been enriched with different variants, each designed to meet different practical needs while maintaining the concept of a design object at the service of content: Ptolomeo Wall, Ptolomeo x2, Ptolomeo x4, Ptolomeo x4 Short, Ptolomeo Luce, Ptolomeo Art, Ptolomeo Vino, Ptolomeo TV-Smart and Ptolomeo Shelf are now part of this extraordinary family.