Sketches from Spain

For more than a year, the Spanish designer Jaime Hayon has been labeled a rising superstar in the international design scene. Perhaps now it’s finally time to drop the “rising” part. At next week’s Salone Internazionale del Mobile, in Milan, the German publisher Gestalten will release the designer’s first monograph, Jaime Hayon Works, a 320-page hardcover, with an introduction by Jasper Morrison, that spans Hayon’s furniture, interiors, ceramics, lighting, toys, bathroom products, and flamboyant miscellany. (It is unclear whether Nienke Klunder’s portraits of Hayon in a pink bunny suit or top hat and tails are also included.) The book launch will coincide with new Hayon collections for several international clients, including Swarovski, Lladró, and other as-yet-unnamed “major players in the industry.”

The book seems worth picking up at the very least for Hayon’s zany, colorful sketches, which are often presented opposite their eventual real-world incarnations. Thus we get to see that his much-publicized multilegged Showtime credenza for Bd Barcelona changed remarkably little from initial sketch to final product.

In some cases, you could be forgiven for preferring the sketch to reality. For La Terraza del Casino, in Madrid, Hayon drew a cartoonish ballroom with checkered floors and baroque furnishings. The real interior is remarkable. But in its polished formality, how could the room compete with the outlandish fancies of Hayon’s imagination?