Bottega Veneta brings touch of travel home

By Jo Winterbottom

MILAN (Reuters) - Italian designer Bottega Veneta could make a world traveler feel at home with chests of drawers based on a classic leather trunk design, complete with carrying handles on the sides, in its furniture range.

The luxury design brand showed two-drawer and three-drawer chests which looked like trunks stacked ready for a passage or a cruise at its showroom on Thursday.

Bottega Veneta designer Tomas Maier also tried his hand for the first time at an armchair, using a gentle outward bend to the wings that was ideal for curling up with a good guide book.

His "Campaign" seating was based on folding tables and stools -- one extended to bench-size -- using the label's trademark criss-crossed leatherwork, known as intreccio.

But the style of these elegant pieces was more reminiscent of a colonial clubhouse than a bloody battleground.

The intreccio leather work covered the stands of floor lamps, topped with many-stranded rope shades, and found a more traditional role in notebook covers or bookends.

Bottega Veneta, which is owned by the Gucci Group of French company PPR, has also teamed up with KPM, the porcelain company famously acquired in the 18th century by Prussian King Frederick the Great, for a range of dishes featuring a hand-painted version of the intreccio motif -- starting prices at around 85 euros.

And for thirsty travelers in need of refreshment, Bottega Veneta provides wine glasses and tumblers in Murano glass whose bases are engraved with the criss-cross effect.

But Bottega Veneta's Vicenza factory excelled itself in the metal and silverwork, weaving gunmetal to provide the centerpiece of a folding leather-framed screen, or covering cutlery in criss-crossed silver.

(Reporting by Jo Winterbottom; Editing by Jon Boyle)