A 'Stile Liberty' rare desk and chair, circa 1898

One of Italy's foremost furniture makers, Eugenio Quarti was born into a family of craftsmen and at age 14 apprenticed to a furniture maker in Paris. He returned to Italy in the late 1880s and spent a short period in the studio of Carlo Bugatti in Milan, whose exotic and extravagant designs had a lasting influence on him. After a few months Quarti had established himself in a small workshop in Via Donizetti and indeed later married Bugatti's daughter. He became immersed in the thriving artistic life of late 19th-century Milan and was encouraged and enlightened by the teaching at the school of the SocietUmanitaria, where design courses were based on social issues, and where he himself later taught. An 1899 article by Vittorio Pica praises Quarti's unique designs for being neither too imitative of northern European Art Nouveau nor too austere, but instead appealing to the needs of modern living. An identical example of the present lot desk and chair is in the permanent collection of the Musée d'Orsay, Paris.

A desk of this design, from the collection of Francesco Carraro, was sold Christie’s New York, 21/21 – Historical Design, 21 Years for the 21st Century, 19 December 2006, lot 694.