17
Carlo Mollino
Unique adjustable daybed, designed for Casa Orengo, Turin
- Estimate
- $250,000 - 300,000
$506,500
Lot Details
Maple-veneered plywood, maple, stained maple, painted maple veneered wood, brass, fabric.
1949
20 1/2 x 78 1/2 x 29 3/4 in. (52.1 x 199.4 x 75.6 cm) flat
Produced by Apelli & Varesio, Italy.
Specialist
Full-Cataloguing
Catalogue Essay
The present lot is registered in the library of the Museo Casa Mollino, Turin, as number CM364-1.
Phillips would like to thank Fulvio Ferrari and Napoleone Ferrari, Museo Casa Mollino, Turin, and Rossella Colombari, Galleria Colombari, Milan, and Barry Friedman, New York, for their assistance cataloguing the present lot.
The interior of the Marquis Orengo residence, also known as Casa Orengo, was completed in 1950. Carlo Mollino conceived a large series of furniture for the river-facing apartment. The daybed was one of the main interior elements within the spacious living room, together with a large desk, table, chair, armchair, ceiling lights, large bookcase and sideboard. A similar later example of the daybed was produced for the seminal 1950 exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, “Italy at Work.”
Phillips would like to thank Fulvio Ferrari and Napoleone Ferrari, Museo Casa Mollino, Turin, and Rossella Colombari, Galleria Colombari, Milan, and Barry Friedman, New York, for their assistance cataloguing the present lot.
The interior of the Marquis Orengo residence, also known as Casa Orengo, was completed in 1950. Carlo Mollino conceived a large series of furniture for the river-facing apartment. The daybed was one of the main interior elements within the spacious living room, together with a large desk, table, chair, armchair, ceiling lights, large bookcase and sideboard. A similar later example of the daybed was produced for the seminal 1950 exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, “Italy at Work.”
Provenance
Exhibited
Literature
Carlo Mollino
Italian | B. 1905 D. 1973Carlo Mollino made sexy furniture. His style may have grown out of the whiplash curves of Art Nouveau, but the sinuous lines of his furniture were more humanoid than vegetal, evoking arched backs and other body parts. Mollino was also an avid aviator, skier and racecar driver — he designed his own car for Le Mans. His love of speed and danger comes across in his designs, which MoMA curator Paola Antonelli has described as having "frisson."
Mollino had no interest in industrial design and the attendant constraints of material costs and packaging. His independent wealth allowed him to pick and choose projects, resulting in an oeuvre of unique, often site-specific works that were mostly executed by the Turin joinery firm Apelli & Varesio. Apart from a coffee table that he designed in 1950 for the American company Singer & Sons, his furniture never went into production. Notwithstanding the support of Gio Ponti, Mollino's design contemporaries largely dismissed him as an eccentric outsider. However, the combination of scarcity (Mollino only made several hundred works in his lifetime), exquisite craftsmanship and idiosyncratic "frisson" has rightly placed Carlo Mollino in the highest tier of twentieth-century design collecting.
Browse ArtistMollino had no interest in industrial design and the attendant constraints of material costs and packaging. His independent wealth allowed him to pick and choose projects, resulting in an oeuvre of unique, often site-specific works that were mostly executed by the Turin joinery firm Apelli & Varesio. Apart from a coffee table that he designed in 1950 for the American company Singer & Sons, his furniture never went into production. Notwithstanding the support of Gio Ponti, Mollino's design contemporaries largely dismissed him as an eccentric outsider. However, the combination of scarcity (Mollino only made several hundred works in his lifetime), exquisite craftsmanship and idiosyncratic "frisson" has rightly placed Carlo Mollino in the highest tier of twentieth-century design collecting.