A collector’s guide to the icons of Italian mid-century design

Gio Ponti

Giovanni ‘Gio’ Ponti was a modern Renaissance man. With a career spanning seven decades, his work as a designer and architect ranged from armchairs to cars to skyscrapers, while he also edited magazines for more than 50 years.

After training as an architect, Ponti began to design Neoclassical villas while also, from 1923 to 1930, serving as art director for the Richard Ginori ceramics factory, creating classically inspired porcelain. His later furniture designs would come to epitomise post-war Italy’s design confidence: one of his most iconic pieces, the Superleggera (‘super light’) chair, was remarkably strong, yet so light that a schoolchild could lift it with one finger.

Ponti created his furniture for some 120 different companies, with a view to making it accessible to as many people as possible. Manufacturers would adapt his designs to fit their production, which is why Ponti’s pieces appear in a range of subtly different proportions, materials and methods of construction.

Ponti’s work across a variety of media has been celebrated in numerous exhibitions, including a major 2018-19 retrospective at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris.

Probably the two most crucial periods of his influence were the early years of the 1930s, when he supported the internationalisation of the Italian identity through Domus — the magazine he had founded in 1928 — and the post-war period of around 1945-1960. Works from these periods have become increasingly scarce, and are actively sought-after by collectors.

Carlo Mollino

Although Carlo Mollino and Gio Ponti were friends and respected each other’s work, the two could not have been more different. Unlike Ponti, who favoured a universal, international approach to design, Mollino preferred to remain active only within his immediate environment of Turin.

Born into a wealthy family, Mollino could afford to be selective with his projects. Many of his furniture designs were one-off commissions for friends or private clients, such as the record-breaking glass and oak table he created for the Casa Orengo in Turin. The ‘Tipo B’ side chair was designed as a wedding gift for Gio Ponti’s daughter, Lisa.

Mollino used his furniture to explore his interests in cutting-edge technology and new materials, as well as to indulge in his love of symbolism. Both a modernist and a Surrealist, Mollino was a man of many eclectic passions — in addition to architecture and design, he was a trained pilot and racing driver, and a creator of erotic Polaroids.

Many of the bespoke interiors Mollino created for his clients were dismantled in the 1970s and 1980s, with works immediately entering private collections or museums. As a result, the appearance of any of Mollino’s unique furnishings on the auction market is always a source of excitement.

Carlo Scarpa

Carlo Scarpa studied architecture but never obtained a professional licence, although that didn’t stop him from later designing some of Italy’s most celebrated buildings. For the first 20 years of his career, however, he was a designer of Venetian glass, pushing the boundaries of Venice’s venerable glassblowing traditions.

Scarpa was both prolific and revolutionary as a glass designer between the 1920s and 1940s, revealing a ‘built’ or ‘constructed’ quality to many of his vessels, which was consistent with his training as an architect.

Some of Scarpa’s finest architectural work was in the renovation of Italy’s historic museums and galleries. It was while working at the Museo Correr in Venice that he designed his famous easel, made of wood, steel and brass, fully adjustable but with no screws or bolts. Scarpa liked it so much that he continued to use one throughout his career.

Despite his broad and visionary talent, Scarpa made relatively few furniture designs, and they were mainly site-specific installations for private clients — or, as in the case of the easel, designed to integrate seamlessly within a gallery environment.

Carlo de Carli

Carlo de Carli was a practising architect, a respected academic and writer, and a prolific furniture designer. After graduating from the Polytechnic University of Milan in 1934, he worked for a while under Gio Ponti, before setting up a studio of his own.

As a furniture designer, de Carli worked with some of the leading manufacturers of his time, including Cassina and Tecno. He also worked on private commissions, such as all the furnishings for Casa Galli in Milan, designed to fit around the inhabitants’ lifestyles. As he once stated: ‘A chair, an armchair or a table must be elements in which one can feel an individual presence.’

De Carli was one of a new generation of post-war architects and designers who were instrumental in guiding the democratisation of good, effective modern design. He was prolific in his output, with commissions including furniture for ocean liners and hotels — often in collaboration with Gio Ponti. All this was in addition to the unique pieces he designed for private clients, which are among his most sought-after works.

De Carli strived to create designs that incorporated the body’s movements and posture. The relationship between human form and design is particularly evident in his chairs and beds, which, to some extent, dictate the pose of their user.

Fontana Arte

Fontana Arte was founded in 1932 by the glass artisan Luigi Fontana, together with Gio Ponti and Pietro Chiesa. More than nine decades on, the company is still considered one of the leading makers of glass lighting, furniture and home accessories. Sophisticated in their design and of flawless execution, the works produced by Fontana Arte are regarded as representing the pinnacle of Italian craftsmanship and innovation.

Under Chiesa’s directorship in the 1930s, Fontana Arte expanded from decorative stained-glass products to tables, mirrors and lighting, with many of its early designs remaining in production today.

Collectors and decorators appear to be increasingly drawn to the dramatic and stylish chandeliers, appliques and lamps that represent the breadth of the production of the 1950s and early 1960s, which was often bespoke.

In the 1950s, after Chiesa’s death, new art director Max Ingrand transformed Fontana Arte’s production from exclusive, limited-edition pieces to affordable but high-quality designs, accessible to a larger market, while also collaborating with artists and artisans.

Explore Design at Christie’s

Related artists: Carlo de Carli, Carlo Mollino, Gio Ponti, Carlo Scarpa