Towards the end of Jasper’s first year at the Royal College of Art, Campari made a call-out for ideas for its marketing. Jasper answered it with designs for a table, desk, chaise longue and columns, that integrated the small conical bottles of ready-mixed Campari. Each piece was to be made of mottled glass resting on the bottles for legs. He made a series of collages to show the designs. (The collages are now lost, only some slides remain.) The table is shown above. It was designed to be 600 x 600 mm with glass of 6 mm and 10 mm.
The inspiration for the proposal: the bottle of ready-mixed Campari.
Jasper proposed that his Campari furniture be arranged as a window display but with ‘Various objects carefully placed (i.e. shoe on column) to suggest an interior rather than a window display.’ His idea was that: ‘The set should play on the idea of understatement–overstatement i.e. 100 bottles of Campari ready mixed without labels, one bottle of Campari (unmixed) with label. Also minimum use of materials to create maximum effect.’ He explained his thinking: ‘A bottle of Campari ready-mixed on a shelf in Barkers doesn’t look as good as it could. The idea of the display would be to illustrate better the beauty of the bottle and the colour of the drink.’
Campari rejected Jasper’s proposal. He made notes from the phonecall:
Jasper was sanguine. He saw the failed project as ‘a lesson in approaching a manufacturer with an idea so far removed from his concept of the product and packaged as neatly as possible to present a viable marketing trick on their behalf whilst paying for the experiment for myself.’
In 1985, the proposal was revived for a window display at Harvey Nichols but nothing came of it.
Drafts of the proposal in a sketchbook.