Furniture Designers Die in Private Plane Crash

Ivan Luini, founder and president of Kartell U.S. Inc., New York-based furniture manufacturer, died last week in a small-plane crash in Colorado, near the Wyoming border. He was 46.

Perishing in the same accident was Sergio Savarese, furniture designer and a founder of the New York furniture store Dialogica. He was 48.

Luini and Savarese were flying cross-country, in the Cirrus SR20, a four-seat, single-engine aircraft that they co-owned, on a business trip to visit stores. According to a report from the National Transportation Safety Board, the pilot reported icing conditions and turbulence, and an inability to maintain altitude. It is not known which man was at the controls. Both were avid pilots.

Luini was a native of Varese, Italy, with a background in electronics engineering. From 1986 to 1990, he was vp for overseas sales at B & B Italia, a furniture company. After moving from Milan to New York, he worked for a company that introduced Cappellini, Flexform, Ingo Maurer and other design brands to the country. In 1994, he co-founded Luceplan USA Inc. (New York), the innovative lighting company, serving as executive vp until 1998.

In 1998, he became president of Kartell U.S., a subsidiary of the Milan furniture manufacturer Kartell s.p.a. The company’s worldwide president, Claudio Luti, who had previously worked for the Versace organization, signed furniture designers like Antonio Citterio, Philippe Starck, Piero Lissoni and Ron Arad, among others, to create new products, expanding the company’s library of classic designs by Joe Columbo, Anna Castelli Ferrieri and Gae Aulenti.

Luini opened the company’s first American store on Greene Street in New York in 1998 and helped develop stores in Miami, San Francisco, Atlanta, Boston and Los Angeles. Recently he was said to be in discussions to add Kartell’s plastic chairs, storage units and lighting to a new chain of hotels and restaurants designed by Philippe Starck, which are expected to open next year.

“He has re-branded plastic, selling plastic furniture to a higher level of consumers and designers, where once it was just sold to the masses,” said George Beylerian, president and ceo of Material ConneXion, a global materials library in New York.

Savarese founded Dialogica in 1988 with his wife, Monique, an interior designer. The store was one of the first retailers in SoHo to feature contemporary furniture designs. It became a multimillion-dollar business, with stores in Los Angeles and New York and distributors in other cities.

As reported in The New York Times, “Savarese’s expressive and sculptural silhouettes and his wife’s bold use of color helped mark a new informality in contemporary design — a break from the spare or historical aesthetics that were popular in the late 80s. Tailored velvet sofas, chairs and daybeds commanded cheerful attention with yellow, crimson or cerulean blue upholstery, with colors mixed together in a single piece.”

Savarese was born in Naples, studied as a geologist and spent seven years working for health organizations in Africa, analyzing soil to determine what crops to grow. Back in Italy, he designed a folding stool, found someone to produce it and then expanded his collection.

He and his wife, who studied at Domus Academy in Milan, drew praise at the first International Contemporary Furniture Fair in New York, which encouraged them — despite no retail experience — to risk opening a store on Broome Street in SoHo. They produced furniture in the Bronx, ultimately selling the factory to the artisans who continue to make the furnishings today.