“I despise creating useful objects,” declared Pietro Chiesa, although we cannot know if he barked this aversion or whispered it. On January 1, 1934, Chiesa became the creative director of the newly formed Milanese design firm Fontana Arte and out poured paradox—lamps, tables, desks, frames, vases—a stream of useful objects which garnered gold medals at international exhibitions throughout the decade and which won the designer the Legion of Honour in 1937. Among Chiesa’s most glorious works, his mirrored glass cabinets of the mid-to-late 1930s best illustrate the romance inherent in his contradictory nature. To borrow from Franco Deboni (Fontana Arte: Gio Ponti, Pietro Chiesa, Max Ingrand, Allemandi, Turin, 2012), a “gust of modernism” blows across the Macassar-veneered face of the present lot, lulling it’s Art Deco undulations. Or perhaps the opposite is true: the irrepressible vigor of its decoration pushes its rectilinear nature out of bounds. Either way, the chest holds in its frame what the Italians call un altro da se, another self.