Carlo Mollino - Design Masters New York Tuesday, December 13, 2011 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Acquired by the previous owner from Singer & Sons, New York

  • Literature

    Fulvio Ferrari, Carlo Mollino Cronaca, Turin, 1985, p. 129, fig. 215;Giovanni Brino, Carlo Mollino, Munich, 1987, p. 132; Renate Ulmer and SilvioSan Pietro, eds., Carlo Mollino: Sedie e Arredi, exh. cat., Institut Mathildenhöhe Darmstadt, Milan, 1994, p. 74; Giovanni Brino, Carlo Mollino: Architecture as Autobiography, London, 2005, p. 137, fig. 316; Rossella Colombari, Carlo Mollino: Catologo del Mobili, Milan, 2005, p. 114, fig. 105; Fulvio Ferrari and Napoleone Ferrari, The Furniture of Carlo Mollino, London, 2006, pp. 109, fig. 131 and 133 fora drawing, and 226; Charlotte and Peter Fiell, eds., Domus, Vol. III, 1950–1954, Cologne, 2006, p. 239; Fulvio Ferrari and Napoleone Ferrari, eds., Carlo Mollino: arabesques, exh. cat., Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Milan,2007, p. 104, fig. 165

  • Artist Biography

    Carlo Mollino

    Italian • 1905 - 1973

    Carlo 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.

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PROPERTY FROM A CANADIAN COLLECTION

42

Low table, model no. 1114

ca. 1950
Maple, glass, brass.
18 1/4 x 52 x 23 1/4 in. (46.4 x 132.1 x 59.1 cm.)
Produced by Appelli & Varesio, Italy and retailed by Singer & Sons, USA.

Estimate
$80,000 - 120,000 

Sold for $148,900

Design Masters

13 December 2011
New York