Ignazio Gardella
“The way it reflects light enhances the design and makes it exceptionally suited to all living environments.”
Heritage Collection
Molteni&C is re-examining its own history with an eye to the future. The 80!Molteni exhibition, the creation of the company’s historical archive and its recently inaugurated Molteni Museum have provided an opportunity for revival, from the origins of modernity.
Official hashtag: #MolteniHeritageCollection
Great new classics
Intriguing traces have emerged from a past that turns out to be contemporary, ripe for a re-think today. Unique pieces that can step straight out of their museum showcases and into our contemporary homes.
Ignazio Gardella’s Blevio table joins Molteni&C’s Heritage Collection, inaugurating a partnership with the Gardella Historical Archive: the first episode of a relationship based on research and exchange, destined to develop over the years to come.
“The way it reflects light enhances the design and makes it exceptionally suited to all living environments.”
Edoarda De Ponti
Designed in 1930, Blevio is a table that Gardella (1905-1999) made as a single model for his own family home, Villa Usuelli in Blevio on Lake Como. It is an extraordinarily harmonious and timeless piece of furniture, which today becomes collective heritage; it combines the purest features and intrinsic simplicity.
The iconic Round D.154.5 designed by Gio Ponti has very modern shapes, almost out of this world, which had never been thought of before.
1960 Alitalia Milano © Gio Ponti Archives Archivio storico Eredi Gio Ponti
1957 XI Triennale Milano © Gio Ponti Archives Archivio storico Eredi Gio Ponti
“The Round armchair was initially conceived by Gio Ponti in 1954. At that time, the design of this armchair was holding together all the energy, positivity and enthusiasm of the following decade.”
Salvatore Licitra - Curator of Gio Ponti Archives
More than 70 years after its original design, the D.847.1 console table is reborn thanks to the Heritage Collection reissue project by Molteni&C, in collaboration with the Gio Ponti Archives.
“This elegant and refined desk was modern in its profiles and proportions, which are both classic and innovative, in the play of curves and in the invention of an elegantly rounded drawer.”
Salvatore Licitra - Curator of Gio Ponti Archives
The armchair, on the other hand, was designed for one of the projects closest to Gio Ponti’s heart, the villa of the Planchart collectors in Caracas (1953-57). It is part of the Gio Ponti Collection, which was curated by Molteni&C under the artistic direction of Studio Cerri & Associati.
The best designs are timeless and this revisited edition respects that, by renovating and reviving the project’s soul. New technologies, materials, functional solutions, with respect for its original – exactly as Gio Ponti would have wanted.
The D.859.1 table, designed primarily as a meeting table for up to ten people, stands out not only for its impressive size—over 3,60 meters long—but especially for its simple yet refined design.
Designed by Gio Ponti and produced for Altamira, an American company founded by the nephew of the Spaniard De Cuevas, was displayed in the company’s showroom in New York.
“It was thought that architecture should be purely functional, with very little margin for decoration. But the Italian genius could not help but create architecture with a more human face, which we call the Latin touch.”
Always passionate about nautical furnishings, Gio Ponti gained direct experience in four ocean liners and two cruise ships upgraded or built from scratch after the war, between 1949 and 1951: the Conte Grande, Africa, Oceania, Conte Biancamano, Andrea Doria and Giulio Cesare. Ponti designed this easy chair with slight variants for these ships.
The Plancharts commissioned Gio Ponti to design their home, on top of a cerro overlooking Caracas. For them, refined art collectors and Italy lovers, Ponti designed everything, from the structure to the furniture. This armchair is a shell to accommodate precious friends. It is a sculpture among sculptures and an art work among the art works.
“I am grateful to Anala and Armando Planchart for letting me honour their home with Italian art works, alongside the works of Venezuelan and international abstract artists and those of the great Venezuelan master Reveron (...). These range from Morandi paintings to those of Campigli, Melotti and Rui, the Venini and Seguso glasses, Gambone ceramics, and Ferrari silks...”
Gio Ponti, Domus 1961
This year the Molteni&C Collection designed by Gio Ponti is enriched with the D.355.1 hanging bookcase.
Designed in the 1950s for M. Singer&Sons, one of the most important furnishing companies in New York, this small table is part of a collection for the American market. The combination of different shapes and materials testifies to Gio Ponti’s diversity and innovative power.
Architecture, a pan virtuosity, acrobatic proportions and an intersection of joints. An infinite table which is a geometric dialogue between the glass and rosewood – lightness and abstraction distilled.
The drawer unit designed in different variations between 1952 and 1955, is based on the original drawings kept by the Gio Ponti Archives. The art direction of this new edition was entrusted to Studio Cerri & Associati.
Marked by hand-painted white drawer fronts with applied handles in various wood kinds (elm, Italian walnut, mahogany and rosewood).
“Recreating pieces that were never produced, (because Ponti used to design more than what he could have produced) or re-editing forgotten pieces, gives us the opportunity to better understand his personality, work and role in an important moment of Italian architecture”
Salvatore Licitra, Gio Ponti Archivist
Molteni&C proposes the forms of the objects Gio Ponti designed and built for his house in Via Dezze in Milan. His small table, library, and armchair show that there was no gap between his personal appeals and his architectural vision. This is living according to Ponti.
From Gio Ponti’s house, located in via Dezza in Milan, the small table D.555.1, designed in 1954-1955, is produced by Molteni&C based on the original drawings from the ponti archives.
Designed in 1956-1957, the bookcase is part of the furniture of Gio Ponti’s private house in Via Dezza in Milan.
This re-edition is produced based on the original drawings from the Gio Ponti Archives. It is part of the Molteni&C Gio Ponti Collection.
Designed in 1953, the D.153.1 armchair is part of the furniture of Gio Ponti’s private house in via Dezza in Milan. This re-edition is produced by Molteni&C based on the original drawings from the ponti archives.
“The metal tube chair and table have an absolute original form, clearly distinguished from any of the traditional frames. They have a new practicality and elasticity, closer to the modern essential requirements. At the same time, their series-construction, can guarantee their form’s absolute perfection of beauty, in absolute conformity to the first model created by the artist.”
Gio Ponti, Domus, 1939
Gio Ponti designed everything for the first Montecatini building in Largo Donegani in Milan in 1935, architecture and furnishings including desks, lamps, wardrobes.
“The modern architect, the academic architect, should learn from the craftsmen: marble workers (shiny surfaces, polished, stone hammered, bush-hammered, and scaled), carpenters, stucco workers, blacksmiths, from all the workers and craftsmen (that is so beautiful).”
Gio Ponti, Amate l’architettura
D.950.1
D.754.1
MHC.1 is a new edition of the prototype of the first modern piece of furniture made by Molteni&C, the chest of drawers designed by Werner Blaser. Thought it was never produced industrially, in 1955 it won first prize at the Cantù “Prima mostra selettiva - Concorso internazionale del mobile”, a competition designed to re-qualify the image of Italian furniture making. The jury was made up of Gio Ponti, Alvar Alto, Romano Barocchi, Carlo de Carli and Finn Juhl. The unusual joinery features a simple three-fork joint.
MHC.2 is a re-edition of the bookcase prototype designed in 1959 by Yasuhiko Itoh. Made in curved wood, a complex process for that time period, it won an award at the 3rd edition of the Selettiva competition in Cantù del 1959. This piece is both elegant and refined. After issuing a limited edition run of 100 numbered pieces, this item is now available as a standard, non-numbered piece in curved wood covered in walnut.
ARCHIVIOUNIFOR
A project of re-editions developed on the historic archives and the original designs by the great architects that have worked with the company over the years. Thus, some the most unique, precious, and timeless objects of Italian design are being made available once again. The starting point of the project is Aldo Rossi.
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