'Insect' Illuminated Cabinet

A rare illuminated cabinet by Pierre Cardin and Roberto Fallani, the Insect model transforms storage into a theatrical design object. Created circa 1978, the piece is composed in black lacquered laminated beech with paper elements and a remote-control lighting feature. Its stacked circular forms, glowing central element and articulated silhouette give it the futuristic, almost creature-like presence suggested by its name. The model is documented in Benjamin Loyauté’s Pierre Cardin: Evolution, published by Flammarion in 2006.

1978
Black lacquered laminated beech, paper and remote-control lighting
70.9" H × 77.8" L × 20.9" W
(180cm H × 197.5cm L × 53cm W)

About the Makers:
Pierre Cardin was one of the 20th century’s great design futurists, best known for pushing fashion beyond tradition through Space Age silhouettes, experimental forms and an expansive creative vision that moved from couture into furniture, interiors and industrial design. The Brooklyn Museum notes that Cardin’s futuristic work of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s extended “from fashion to furniture, industrial design, and beyond,” while SCAD FASH described him as a designer who explored new materials and silhouettes with boundary-pushing ambition.

Roberto Fallani is an Italian artist and designer whose work sits between furniture, sculpture and decorative arts. Often associated with expressive, high-drama forms, Fallani collaborated with Pierre Cardin on lacquered furniture in the 1970s and 1980s, including bold black pieces that share the same theatrical, futuristic language as Cardin’s broader design universe. The Insect cabinet is especially compelling because it fuses both makers’ strengths: Cardin’s Space Age imagination and Fallani’s sculptural approach to furniture as an object of presence.