On an ordinary afternoon in 1970, Luigi Lineri was walking along the bed of the River Adige. Rather than looking to the sky, or the flow of the water, instead his eyes kept chancing upon different stones that shared striking similarities. He began to collect them, describing the experience as 'a strange dialogue between man and stone, past and present'. Slowly, over the course of 50 years, the artist and poet has collected thousands of these river stones, categorising them in groups such as 'sheep heads', 'snouts', 'bodies' and 'faces'. Every surface of his home is adorned with boards bearing families of these stone shapes.

The world that Lineri was building for himself was not necessarily about stone, but about a commitment to looking - remaining consistently inquisitive to his immediate surroundings. In the increasingly globalised world of design, it’s easy to lose this connection to and exploration of our context. Considerations of the material provenance, the project’s use and the duration can be sidelined in order to achieve a specific aesthetic. Forever-materials are shoehorned into highly processed projects, the existence of which lasts merely a blink of an eye in the lifespan of the material. The most convenient routes are often those that are systematically extractive, using raw, virgin resources over ones that incorporate re-use, or have had a life prior.