I had the pleasure of listening to designer Gaetano Pesce speak at last year's Design Miami, where I became enamored of his "Pesce-isms"-not a diverse species of fish, but rather a unique system of speech. Partially, the "Pesce-isms" result from his beautifully awkward transliterations, since he is not a native speaker of English; and partly, these wonderful packets of language stem from his unintentional mispronunciations. So, for example, Pesce spoke about innovative thinking as a way to wash the brain and of the problems with ar-ti-fish-al-i-ty.

La Michetta. Designed by Gaetano Pesce for Meritalia.

He also made some keen if nebulous pronouncements about the role of gender in design-condensed, if somewhat simplified, on the Meritalia website as "the theory of the 'femininity' of architectural projects." In the spirit of such Pesce-isms, Italian furniture company Meritalia offers La Michetta.

La Michetta is Pesce's system of modular components based on the "least expensive bread baked in Milan. No two michettas are ever the same, and even when baked in tins, they always take on different shapes during rising and baking." At Design Miami, Pesce spoke of how mass-produced furniture could be created in a way to foster individualism, a statement some audience members pondered over. But his modular seating and tables exemplify this model: "Though mass-produced with industrial processes, it always remains unique due to the different arrangements and different manufacturing methods used for the individual elements-just like michettas." By putting the square and rectangular units together in different arrangements, users can create artfully varied compositions. Whether what results is a sofa, sectional, or settee remains up for discussion. Irregularly tufted in Pesce's tradition of the "poorly executed," pieces in La Michetta maintain an animation that reminds us of the namesake bread, since they seem to still be rising.

Pesce has an ideal partner in Meritalia, who also commits exquisite mistranslations and lovely abuses of the English language. On the company's website, we learn that Meritalia "dedicates itself to a high level of work providing a personalized and complete 'keys in hand' with an almost exaggerated care." What exactly constitutes complete "keys in hand"? For that matter, how does one personalize "keys in hand"? Or, better yet, how would one deliver incomplete "keys in hand"? These are all deep philosophical questions that only Meritalia-and perhaps Pesce-can answer.

Via Chair Blog.