The bent plywood modular frame of the coffee table Butterfly, which reproduces the elegant beauty of the shape of a butterfly, made as light as possible and reinforced in its key angular points, turns Alexander Taylor’s design into a complete example of functional sculpture – though the author usually dealt with the simplification of the mass product.
Although a formal reference to Carlo Mollino’s organicism immediately emerges, also in connection with the lepidopteron (a symbol of femininity, a constant presence in the poetic imagination of the eccentric master from Turin), here Taylor, who is involved in the dynamics of industrial design in its strictest sense, chooses the shape of a butterfly as the reproducible element that is reflected, added up and multiplied to form the base of a coffee table with square or rectangular plate glass top, held up by 8 or 12 modular elements, respectively, with a strong sculptural value.
