5
Gio Ponti and Luigi Zortea
Unique pair of large wall lights
circa 1948
Glazed earthenware.
Larger: 51 x 28 x 12.5 cm (20 1/8 x 11 x 4 7/8 in.)
Together with a certificate of expertise from the Gio Ponti Archives.
Full-Cataloguing
Phillips wishes to thank Salvatore Licitra and Brian Kish for their assistance cataloguing the present lot.
Having apprenticed at the Passarin then Fabris ceramic factories, in 1921 the Italian ceramist Luigi Zortea opened his own workshop on via Volpato 4 in Bassano. There Zortea dedicated himself to the creation of 'white tufts, forests of flowers and birds, or of corals and fish in glazed majolica’, and was described by his friend Gio Ponti in a 1950 article for Domus (no. 525), as ‘one of the kindest and most poetic inventors of our ceramics'. In addition to his own production, during the late 1930s and 1940s Zortea realised works based on Ponti's designs, which the architect incorporated into many of his interiors, such as those for the Ripamonti aparment, the ‘Conte Biancamano’ and the ‘Conte Grande’ ocean liners. The present lot was possibly designed by Ponti for the Cremaschi apartment in 1948.
Having apprenticed at the Passarin then Fabris ceramic factories, in 1921 the Italian ceramist Luigi Zortea opened his own workshop on via Volpato 4 in Bassano. There Zortea dedicated himself to the creation of 'white tufts, forests of flowers and birds, or of corals and fish in glazed majolica’, and was described by his friend Gio Ponti in a 1950 article for Domus (no. 525), as ‘one of the kindest and most poetic inventors of our ceramics'. In addition to his own production, during the late 1930s and 1940s Zortea realised works based on Ponti's designs, which the architect incorporated into many of his interiors, such as those for the Ripamonti aparment, the ‘Conte Biancamano’ and the ‘Conte Grande’ ocean liners. The present lot was possibly designed by Ponti for the Cremaschi apartment in 1948.